LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

BEefr... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



f 



OUGHT THE 
CONFESSION OF FAITH 
TO BE REVISED? 



JOHN DEWITT, D.D. 
HENRY J. VAN DYKE, D.D. 
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D. 
WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D. 



OUGHT THE CONFESSION OF 



FAITH TO BE REVISE; 



A SERIES OP PAPERS 



BY 



JOHN DE WITT, D.D. 
HENRY J. VAN DYKE, D.D. 
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D. 
WM. G. T. SHEDD, D.D. 

) / ' 




NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
38 West Twenty-third Street. 
1890. 



COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & CO. 



PRESS OF 
EDWARD O. JENKINS' 80N, 
NEW YORK. 



PUBLISHEES' NOTE. 



The following papers are issued in their present form 
by permission of the various writers. It should be stated, 
however, that they are simply reprints (save the correction 
of a few typographical errors), and not revisions of the 
original text. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — Letter of Dr. De Witt (New York Evangelist, 

June 6, 1889), .7 

II. — Kesponse of Dr. Van Dyke (New York Evangel- 
ist, June 27, 1889), 9 

III. — Dr. De Witt's Response to Dr. Van Dyke (New 

York Evangelist, July 11, 1889), . . . 14 

IV. — Dr. Van Dyke's Rejoinder to Dr. DeWitt (New 

York Evangelist, July 18, 1889), ... 19 

V. — Dr. De Witt on Dr. Van Dyke's Rejoinder (New 

York Evangelist, July 25, 1889), . . .25 

VI. — Replication of Dr. Van Dyke to Dr. DeWitt 

(New York Evangelist, August 1, 1889), . . 33 

VII. — Prof. Warfield's Paper presented to the New 

Brunswick Presbytery, June 25, 1889, . . 39 

VIH. — Dr. Van Dyke on the Action of the New Bruns- 
wick Presbytery (Herald and Presbyter, July 
31, 1889), 42 

IX. — Prof. Warfield in reply to Dr. Van Dyke (Her- 
ald and Presbyter, August 21, 28, September 
4, 1889), 47 

X. — Dr. Van Dyke's reply to Prof. Warfield (Her- 
ald and Presbyter, September 11, 18, 25, 1889), 63 

XI. — Letter of Prof W. G. T. Shedd (New York 

Evangelist, September 5, 1889), . . .81 

(5) 



6 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



XIX. — Dr. Van Dyke on Peof. Shedd's Letter (New 

York Evangelist, September 26, 1889), . . 92 

XIII, — Further Bemarks by Prof. Shedd (New York 

Evangelist, October 10, 1889), . . .100 

XIV. — Dr. Van Dyke in reply to Prof. Shedd (New 

York Evangelist, October 17, 1889), . . 107 

XV. — A Note from Dr. Shedd (New York Evangelist, 



XVI. — God's Infinite Love to Men. Dr. Van Dyke. 

[The Presbyterian, October 5, 1889), . .116 

XVTL — God's Infinite Love to Men and The West- 
minster Confession. Prof. Warfield. {The 
Presbyterian, November 2, 1889), . . . 120 

XVIII. — The Confession and God's Infinite Love to Men. 



October 24, 1889), 



115 



Dr. Van Dyke. {The Presbyterian, November 
16, 1889), 



126 



i 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



i. 

LETTER OF DR. DE WITT. 

The subject of the Revision of the Confession will now 
come before the Presbyteries in a form which will enable 
our ministers seriously to consider it. One does not need 
to express the hope that they will bring to its study an 
adequate appreciation of the importance of rightly answer- 
ing the Assembly's questions, or of the magnitude of the 
task they will impose on the Church if they shall decide 
in favor of Revision. This may safely be taken for 
granted. 

There is, however, a suggestion which any minister may 
properly take on himself to make at the outset. This 
is, that if a Presbytery shall express a desire that the 
statements of the Confession on a particular subject be 
amended, this desire should be given not only a general 
and negative form, but a positive and constructive form 
also. Let us know exactly the words which a Presbytery 
may wish to substitute for the present words of the Con- 
fession. 

It is easy enough to criticise the language of the West- 
minster Divines ; but it is not so easy to write formulas on 
the same subjects, which will command as general an assent 
throughout the Church. This is a fair suggestion. I do 

(?) 



8 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



not know whether a committee was appointed by the Gen- 
eral Assembly lately in session, to receive the Presbyterial 
replies ; but it is clear to me that such a committee might 
quite properly eliminate as valueless, and leave unreported, 
any reply which does not give a confessional or symbolical 
form to a Presbytery's proposed amendment. Let us have 
samples of the new or revised statements. If any one wants 
revision on any subject, let him try his hand at a formula 
correlated to the formulas which he does not want revised. 
Why not? If the present confessional declarations are 
made to stand up for critical inspection in the fierce light' 
of the open day, why should the proposed future confes- 
sional declarations be suffered to half conceal themselves in 
a sort of dim moonshine ? It is possible that some of our 
ministers have, or suppose they have, formulas in their heads 
better than those in the Confession. Let us see the formulas. 
Let them be subjected to the criticism that can be offered 
only after they shall have been printed. Let no one be 
permitted to suppose that he is doing anything for Revis- 
ion by simply saying, " The sections on Predestination 
should be amended," but compel him to write out a section 
which he is prepared to defend as better. 

Respectfully yours, 

J ohn De Witt. 

McCormick Theological Seminary, June 7, 1889. 



II. 



KESPONSE OF DK. VAN DYKE. 

The revision of our Confession of Faith does not appear 
to me such a formidable task as Dr. De Witt apprehends. 
This is due doubtless to our different understanding of the 
thing proposed. He says, " It is easy enough to criticise 
the language of the Westminster Divines ; but it is not so 
easy to write formulas on the same subjects which will 
command as general an assent throughout the Church." 
For one I do not believe that either the science of theology 
and Scripture exegesis, or the art of expressing divine truth 
in acceptable words, has so far declined in the Presbyterian 
Church that it would be impossible to rewrite the whole or 
any part of the Westminster Confession. If it were so, it 
would be a sad result of these two hundred years of Biblical 
study and theological training. But it is not necessary to 
discuss this question. So far as I know, nobody proposes 
to make a new Confession, nor to rewrite the old one, nor 
even to make an entire new statement of any doctrine be- 
longing to the system which it contains. It is not a recon- 
struction, but a revision, which is proposed. To revise, 
according to Worcester, is " to look over with a view to 
correct or amend." After studying the Confession for 
nearly half a century, and adhering to it to-day with as 
much loyalty as any man ought to feel toward any un- 
inspired statement of divine truth, I am in favor of the 
proposed revision. Without admitting the canon that no 
one ought to criticise a human production unless he is able 
to make a better one, or that no Presbyterian minister 

(9) 



10 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



should express his desire to have the Confession revised 
unless he is able to revise it himself, I am ready at the first 
call of the trumpet to answer Dr. De Witt's challenge to give 
to every one in favor of the revision " samples of the new 
or revised statements," and to " try his hand at a formula 
correlated to the formulas he does not want revised/' 

Let us begin with Chapter III., Of God's eternal decree. 
The first and second sections contain all that is essential to 
the doctrine, admirably sums up the teaching of Scripture 
on the subject, and guards it against the abominable infer- 
ence that God is the author of sin, or that any violence is 
offered to the will of the creature. But the third section 
has a supralapsarian bias. It may be construed to mean 
that men are foreordained, whether to life or death, simply 
as men, and not as fallen men ; in other words, that God 
makes one on purpose to save him, and another on purpose 
to damn him. I would like to see that section amended, 
and brought into "correlation" with the teaching of the 
most orthodox theologians of our time, by inserting the 
words for their sins, so that it would read, " By the decree 
of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and 
angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others 
foreordained for their sins to everlasting death." The 
fourth section I would like to see stricken out. Because 
it states a mere theological inference not in any way neces- 
sary to the exposition of the doctrine, and especially be- 
cause it goes beyond the statements of the Scripture on the 
subject. There is no appropriate proof-text for it. The 
two that are quoted are wide of the mark. The declaration 
of Paul, "The Lord knoweth them that are His" (2 Tim. 
ii. 19), and the saying of Christ, " I know whom I have 
chosen," were not intended to show that the number of 
those predestinated, whether to life or to death, " cannot be 
either increased or diminished," neither do they prove it ; 



COKFESSIOISTAL REVISION". 



11 



nor is it necessary to prove it. The seventh section of the 
same chapter contains another theological inference, which, 
however logical, is not necessary, to a positive and complete 
statement of the Scripture truth. The word pretention, or 
reprobation, is not used in our Confession, but the doctrine 
covered by these terms is taught in this section. Some of 
our ablest and most orthodox ministers openly reject it, 
and it is a stumbling-block to many. If any one says their 
rejection of this section, while they accept the rest of the 
chapter, proves that they are not strictly orthodox, and 
that the statement ought to be retained as a test between 
the Calvinistic and the Calvinist : I have only to say that 
as a Calvinist I have no sympathy with such intolerance 
and want of tenderness for others. 

But the striking out of this section would not satisfy me. 
I would like to see its place supplied with something which 
would amend what many of our best divines regard as a 
serious defect in our Confession taken as a whole, namely : 
that it contains no explicit declaration of the infinite love 
of God, revealed in the fullness of the Gospel salvation as 
sufficient for, adapted to, and freely offered to all men. 
And here I am willing to " try my hand at a formula cor- 
related to the formulas which I do not want revised," and 
to submit it to the criticism of all the orthodox. Let the 
seventh section read thus : " God's eternal decree hindereth 
no one from accepting Christ as He is freely offered to 
us in the Gospel ; nor ought it to be so construed as to 
contradict the declarations of Scripture, that Christ is the 
propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and that God 
is not willing that any should perish, but that all should 
come to repentance." Will any Presbyterian minister dare 
to say that such a formula as this would not correlate with 
the rest of our Confession, or that it would introduce a dis- 
cordant element into the chapter on the divine decrees? 



12 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISIOK. 



That is precisely the position of Arminians and all other 
opponents of the Calvinistic system ; and one who objects 
to such an amendment plays into their hands. I contend 
that this amendment, or one expressing the same thoughts 
in better language, would be in perfect harmony with the 
whole Confession, and that it would add logical force as 
well as divine beauty to the concluding section of the chap- 
ter about handling the doctrine of this high mystery of 
predestination with special prudence and care, so that it 
may afford matter of praise to God and abundant conso- 
lation to all who obey the G-ospel. 

The tenth chapter of the Confession contains the well- 
known phrase, " elect infants dying in infancy." I will 
not enter upon the discussion as to the historic meaning of 
that much-jaculated phrase, nor review the explanations by 
which we answer the interpretations of our enemies, nor 
answer for the thousandth time the old slander that Calvin 
taught that hell is paved with infants' skulls. We have 
fenced and fought and played football with the phrase long 
enough. If the Westminster Assembly adopted it as a 
compromise, let us no longer perpetuate their ambiguity. 
If it means that all dying infants are elect, let us say so in 
the Confession itself, in words that will leave no room for 
controversy. If it means that the whole subject is in doubt, 
and that for aught we know some dying infants may be 
lost, let us reject a doctrine which no Presbyterian min- 
ister holds, or would dare to preach if he did. I believe 
with Dr. Hodge, that all infants dying in infancy, baptized 
and unbaptized, born in Christian or in heathen lands, are 
elect and saved. (See Hodge's " Theology," vol. i., p. 29.) 
And therefore I am in favor of amending the Confession 
at this point by striking out the word elect, and substituting 
the word all, so that the section would read thus : " All 
infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



13 



Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where 
and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons 
who are incapable of being outwardly called by the min- 
istry of the Word." 

These are not all the amendments which I would like to 
have made, but they may serve for the required samples. 
They are offered without consultation with any one. They 
are my personal convictions after many years of study. 
They do not indicate any defection from our Standards, 
but a profound love and loyalty which would vindicate 
them from reproach, and lift them higher in the estimation 
of men. In this respect I claim to be in the first rank of 
the orthodox. But the Confession is not the Bible. Its 
authors were not inspired, nor is their work immaculate. 
As to the sentiment — for it can hardly be called an opinion 
without disrespect — that this human and fallible exposition 
of the Scriptures, after two hundred years of improved 
Christian scholarship, cannot be amended for the better, 
nothing but personal regard for those who entertain it re- 
strains our laughter. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 

Brooklyn, June 22, 1889. 



III. 



DR. DE WITT'S RESPONSE TO DR. YAN DYKE. 

I saw only yesterday Dr. Yan Dyke's response to my 
letter on Confessional Revision. I was delighted to find 
not only that my letter had attracted the attention of so 
eminent a minister, but also that the suggestion it contained 
had received from him the most emphatic endorsement he 
could give to it, namely, the endorsement involved in its 
adoption. Some of your readers may remember that I 
called attention to the ease with which the Confession can 
be criticised, and contrasted this ease with the difficulty of 
formulating confessional statements which will command 
an assent as general as that now commanded by the Con- 
fession of Faith. I suggested that those who desire amend- 
ments, present their amendments in positive form, corre- 
lating them to the statements of the Confession which they 
do not wish amended. 

This Dr. Yan Dyke has done. He has formulated two 
amendments. He has brought to their preparation excep- 
tionally vigorous and well-trained mental powers, wide and 
accurate theological knowledge, and, above all, the accumu- 
lated results of " a study of the Confession for half a cen- 
tury by one who loyally adheres to it." The proposals of 
such a man must be read with deep interest by a large 
number of clergymen ; and the fact that they are put for- 
ward by him, is itself likely to secure for them a favorable 
consideration. I am happy in the thought that I called 
him out, and I am especially interested in the proposals he 
(14) 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



15 



has made, because they finely illustrate the difficulty I men- 
tioned in my letter — the difficulty, I mean, of preparing 
satisfactory confessional formulas. That I may be clearly 
understood, I undertake to show that one, at least, if not 
both, of Dr. Yan Dyke's proposed amendments, will, if 
adopted, make our Confession of Faith a narrower or less 
liberal symbol than it is at present. 

The third section of the tenth chapter commences with 
the often-repeated sentence, "Elect infants dying in in- 
fancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the 
Spirit, who worketh when and where and how He pleas- 
eth." This, Dr. Yan Dyke proposes to amend by striking 
out the word "Elect" and by inserting in its place the 
word "All." He says that he "will not enter upon the 
discussion of the historic meaning of the statement," and 
for that reason I refrain from doing so, although a discus- 
sion of its history, so far as that can be ascertained, would, 
in my judgment, bring into clear light the wisdom and the 
catholicity of the Assembly of Divines. Especially would 
it show how important in their view is the distinction be- 
tween a dogma of the faith, on the one hand, and a private 
opinion on the other, — a distinction which ought never to 
be lost sight of by any who undertake to frame a statement 
intended to bind the conscience of a Church. 

But without going into the history of the sentence, it is 
clear that it permits, as it was intended to permit, a presby- 
ter to hold and to teach any one of the four following opin- 
ions : First, all infants dying in infancy are saved ; second, 
some infants dying in infancy are not saved ; third, though 
it is impossible to 'be certain, yet there is a well-grounded 
hope that all who die in infancy are saved ; fourth, though 
certainty is impossible, there are considerations that awaken 
the fear that God has not chosen to regenerate all infants 
dying in infancy. Thus the Westminster divines left the 



16 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



whole subject to individual opinion, and made places under 
the Confession — as our fathers, by adopting their work, 
made places in the Church — for men of widely differing 
views. 

Dr. Yan Dyke now proposes to define as a doctrine what 
has hitherto been left to private opinion. He will permit 
no opinion except the opinion, " All infants dying in infancy 
are saved." Henceforth, should his proposal be adopted, 
doubt or hesitancy in respect to the future salvation of all 
infants dying in infancy will have no more legal right in the 
breast of a Presbyterian minister than doubt in respect either 
to the existence of a personal God or to the reality of the 
Atonement of Christ. Should a minister make so cautious 
and conservative a statement as that made by the late Prof. 
Henry E. Smith, " As to those who die in infancy, there 
is a well-grounded hope that they are of the elect " (" Chris- 
tian Theology," p. 322), it would be competent for a 
Presbytery to deal with him just as it would deal with a 
minister who should say, " As to a personal God, there is a 
well-grounded hope that He will be found to exist." I say, 
therefore, that Dr. Yan Dyke's proposal on this subject is a 
proposal to narrow the Church — to make it less liberal than 
it is to-day, by lifting out of the realm of opinion, and into 
the realm of officially defined dogma, a subject concerning 
which we are now at liberty to reach individual conclu- 
sions. 

Moreover, if Dr. Yan Dyke should get his amendment 
passed, he would be in no better position as a religious 
teacher, so far as this subject is concerned, than he is now. 
He could not announce in the pulpit any more positively 
than he is now permitted to do, that " all who die in in- 
fancy are saved." The sum total of his gain would be the 
imposition on the whole Church, as a defined dogma, of 
what is now a private belief. The only result would be to 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



17 



make the theological platform of the Church less liberal 
than it now is. 

I have no right to ask for space in order to criticise at 
length Dr. Van Dyke's proposed amendments of the chapter 
on the decree of God. Indeed, writing at a distance from 
my books, I hesitate to say anything. I will say, however, 
that one of them is open to the same objection that I offer 
to his proposal concerning the " infants dying in infancy." 
He objects to the present form of the third section, because 
it has "a supralapsarian bias." He will not say that a sub- 
lapsarian Calvinist cannot accept it. That the sublapsarian 
can do. But the difficulty is that a supralapsarian Calvinist 
can accept it also. The effect of his amendment would not 
be to make it easier for sublapsarian Calvinists to subscribe 
the declaration, for that is perfectly easy now. It would 
only be, if it had any effect of the kind, to make it more 
difficult for supralapsarians to subscribe it. At any rate, 
Dr. Van Dyke's avowed object is to get rid of supralapsarian- 
ism. Now I think it one of the glories of this Confession, 
that its authors were unwilling to drive out of the synagogue 
those who held either historical form of Calvinism. And 
though I am no more a supralapsarian than Dr. Yan Dyke 
is, Beza, Gomarus, Yan Mastricht, and Twisse, the Prolocu- 
tor of the Westminster Assembly, were, unless my memory 
is at fault. And when I read the Institutes of Calvin, I am 
unable to find anything that shows clearly that he was not. 
Certainly, I shall not vote for an amendment intended or 
calculated to make the platform of the Church too narrow 
for these men to stand on. 

I have, I think, maintained the proposition with which I 
began, namely, that Dr. Yan Dyke's amendments, if adopted, 
will make the Confession of our Church less liberal than it 
is. This, I undertake to say, will be the effect of most of 
the amendments that shall be proposed, unless great care is 



18 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISIOJST. 



taken. The "Westminster divines were an exceptionally 
wise body of men. The wisdom of the Assembly was far 
greater than the wisdom of its wisest member. I have not 
studied the Confession for half a century, as Dr. Yan Dyke 
has done. Still I have studied it, and I profoundly admire 
the learning and the wisdom its authors displayed, not only 
in what they defined, but also, and I may say especially, in 
what they might have been expected to define, and yet re- 
frained from defining. The result of their labors is, that the 
Confession, when subscribed as we subscribe it in our 
Church, gives to a ministry the largest liberty possible 
within the limits of the Calvinistic or Reformed theology. 
My own impression is, that we would better let it stand as 
it is. I say this, remembering that it is not impossible that 
an amendment may be proposed which will really improve 
it. I hazard nothing, however, in asserting that attempts 
to improve it, while keeping it Calvinistic, are usually 
attempts to narrow it by imposing passing individual opin- 
ions on the conscience of the whole Church. 

Of course the Presbyterian Church may some day desire 
to relegate all that is distinctively Calvinistic in its creed to 
the realm of private opinion ; and in the interest of Church 
unity, to stand on some such doctrinal platform as that of 
the American Tract Society or the Evangelical Alliance. 
The Congregationalists of some parts of the country have 
done this substantially, but the result up to this time does 
not encourage the hope that such a change of doctrinal 
platform will promote belief in the distinctive doctrines of 
Christianity. 

But this is a large subject, and the excision of Calvinism 
from the Confession is not the subject now before the 
Church. 

John De Witt. 

The Hill : Danville, Pa., July 3, 1889. 



IV. 



! DR. VAN DYKE'S REJOINDER. TO DR. 
DE WITT. 

Dr. De Witt's article in the Evangelist of July 11th, is 
so full of respectful kindness that it seems like ingratitude 
to make any response beyond my thanks for his courtesy. 
But the subject under discussion is so far above personal 
considerations, that I am sure my generous friend will not 
be offended by my observing that he is too hasty in claim- 
ing the victory. Let not him that putteth on his armor, 
boast as he that putteth it off. He has not proved the 
sweeping assertion " that attempts to improve the Confes- 
sion, while keeping it Calvinistic, are usually attempts to 
narrow it by imposing passing individual opinions on the 
conscience of the whole Church"; nor has he shown that 
all or any of the amendments I proposed are " rMvate 
opinions," which, if adopted, " would make our Confession 
less liberal than it is." It is not clear to my mind with 
what precise meaning Dr. De Witt uses the phrase "private 
opinion." In his article it seems — unintentionally, of course 
— to "palter in a double sense." When he says, "Of 
course the Presbyterian Church may desire some day to 
relegate all that is distinctively Calvinistic in its creed, to 
the realm of private opinion," the word private appears to 
be synonymous with unauthorized — not recognized in the 
Standards. But this cannot be his meaning, when he ap- 
plies the same epithet to my proposed amendments: for 
they are confessedly unauthorized, and because they are not 
in the Confession already, we desire to put them into it. 

(19) 



20 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



By " private opinion " he must mean an opinion held by 
very few, not generally adopted, or as he himself explains 
it, " a passing individual opinion." In response to his 
summons, I proposed five distinct amendments. Has he 
proved that any one of them is a passing individual opinion ? 
I think not. Three of them he does not notice at all, viz. : 
the proposals to strike out the fourth and seventh sections 
of the third chapter, and especially the new section which 
I offered as a substitute for the seventh, in these words : 
" God's eternal decree hindereth no one from accepting 
Christ as He is freely offered to us in the Gospel ; nor 
ought it to be so construed as to contradict the declarations 
of Scripture that Christ is the propitiation for the sins of 
the whole world, and that God is not willing that any should 
perish, but that all should come to repentance." This is 
the only instance in which I undertook, in answer to Dr. 
De Witt's challenge, to formulate a statement " correlated 
to the formulas which he does not want revised." But the 
challenger takes no notice of it whatever. Does he brand 
this simple statement of the fullness and freeness of the 
Gospel as a passing individual opinion which ought not to 
be " imposed upon the conscience of the Church " ? Or are 
we permitted to conclude that his silence gives consent ? 

Of the two remaining amendments, the first has for its 
avowed object, as Dr. De Witt correctly says, to get rid of 
the supralapsarian Mas from Section 3, Chapter III., by 
making it read that God foreordains men to everlasting 
death, not merely for His own glory, but also for their 
sins. Dr. De Witt does not deny that as it now stands, it 
has a supralapsarian bias ; but he defends and desires to 
retain the present form of the statement. He says that it 
is perfectly easy for the sublapsarian to subscribe to it, and 
intimates that I will not say to the contrary. But that is 
just what I do say. It is a stumbling-block and an offence. 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISTON. 



21 



If it was designed to embrace both the supralapsarian and 
the sublapsarian form of Calvinism, it failed in its object ; 
for it leans distinctly toward the theory that God foreor- 
dains men to eternal death simply as creatures, antecedent 
to and irrespective of their sins. For one, I do not believe 
this ; neither do I subscribe to it. I receive and adopt the 
Confession as a whole, in spite of this statement. Ninety- 
nine hundredths of our Presbyterian ministers do the 
same. 

But Dr. De Witt is troubled about the efiect of the pro- 
posed amendment upon the standing of the dead. He tells 
us that Gomarus, Yan Maestrict, and Twisse, and even 
Calvin, were supralapsarians, and he will not " vote for an 
amendment which would make the platform of the Church 
too narrow for these men to stand on." Admitting, for the 
sake of the argument (though I deny it in fact, so far as re- 
gards Calvin), that these men all held the supralapsarian 
theory, what then ? None of them but Twisse ever adopted 
our Confession ; and now they are all in heaven, where they 
are not required to do so. Our fellowship with the saints 
in glory does not rest upon our Confession of Faith. We 
propose to amend our Standard with a view to its adapta- 
tion to the living, not to the dead. How many among the 
recognized teachers of theology in the American Presby- 
terian Church have held the supralapsarian theory ? Not 
one. Woods, Richards, Henry B. Smith, the Hodges, 
Thornwell, Shedd— all repudiate it. How many of our 
living ministry believe or preach it? Does Dr. De Witt 
know of any whose conscience would be imposed upon by 
the adoption of my sublapsarian amendment? If there 
were space for such discussion, I could easily show that the 
doctrine of this amendment, so far from being " a passing 
individual opinion," belongs to the very substance and con- 
sensus of the Reformed theology ; that the contrary opinion 



22 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISIOK. 



belongs not to the sixteenth, but to the seventeenth century ; 
that its seed was sown, not by such as Beza and Calvin, but 
by men like Twisse ; and that its fruit is seen in that hide- 
ous Emmonsism from which the New Theology of New 
England is largely the natural and necessary revolt. Dr. 
A. A. Hodge, in his " Consensus of the Eeformed Confes- 
sions," says : " It is no part of the Eeformed faith that God 
created men in order to damn them ; nor that His treatment 
of the lost is to be referred to His sovereign will. He con- 
demns men only as a Judge for their sins, to the praise of 
His glorious justice" (Presbyterian Review, vol. v., p. 
295). Even if there were many men in our Church to-day 
to agree with Twisse, the practical question would be 
whether they should tolerate us, or we tolerate them. I 
think the exercise of toleration is the privilege of an over- 
whelming majority. 

The same course of argument applies equally well to the 
proposed amendment in regard to the salvation of infants. 
The phrase " elect infants," if it was intended to embrace 
all opinions on the subject prevalent in the Westminster 
Assembly at the time of its adoption, has practically failed 
in our day to accomplish its object. It is quoted and under- 
stood by thousands within and without the Presbyterian 
Church, not only as tolerating, but as teaching by implica- 
tion that some dying infants are lost, in fulfilment of a 
supralapsarian decree. But where is the man or woman in 
our Church who believes this % Dr. Hodge says, " It is the 
genera] belief of Protestants, contrary to the doctrine of 
Eomanists and Eomanizers, that all who die in infancy are 
saved" (see "Theology," vol. i., p. 27). He also de- 
clares that he never saw a Calvinistic theologian who 
doubted it. Dr. Thomas Smyth, whose ministry covered 
the greater part of the first half of this century, in his book 
on the "Salvation of Infants," published in 1848, says: 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



23 



" At this time it is, I suppose, universally believed by Pres- 
byterians and those who hold the doctrine of election, that 
all dying infants are included among the elect. I at least 
am not acquainted with any who hold an opposite opinion." 
There is a great cloud of witnesses whose testimony is to the 
same effect. 

But in face of all their testimony, Dr. De Witt says the 
belief that all infants dying in infancy are saved, is a mere 
private opinion — a passing individual opinion — and that 
its adoption into the Confession would be an imposition upon 
the conscience of the whole Church. Nay, he thinks the 
adoption of such an amendment would not only narrow our 
Confession, but might stir up the tires of bigotry and per- 
secution. Surely our good brother is tilting at a shadow 
when he says, " Dr. Yan Dyke will permit no opinion, except 
the opinion that ' all infants dying in infancy are saved.' 
Henceforth, should his proposal be adopted, doubt or hesi- 
tancy in respect to the salvation of all dying infants will 
have no more legal right in the breast of a Presbyterian 
minister, than doubt as to the existence of a personal God, 
or the reality of the atonement of Christ. Should a minis- 
ter make such a cautious and conservative statement as that 
made by the late Prof. H. B. Smith — 6 As to those who die 
in infancy, there is a well-grounded hope that they are of 
the elect ' — it would be competent for a Presbytery to deal 
with him, just as it would deal with a minister who should 
say, 6 As to a personal God, there is a well-grounded hope 
that He will be found to exist.' " This is a reductio ad 
ahsurdum, but it is not on my side. No one proposes to 
make the salvation of infants as important a doctrine as the 
existence of God. I am not so sure as Dr. De Witt seems 
to be, that a well-grounded hope in regard to either, is not 
quite as good as an assured belief. I do not think any 
Presbytery would convict a man of heresy for making either 



24 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



statement. There is, however, this difference between the 
two subjects : the existence of God is a matter of conscious- 
ness as well as of testimony, whereas the salvation of infants 
rests only on the testimony of God's Word. If a man be- 
lieves that his hope of their salvation is well grounded in 
that testimony, I think his faith is about as strong relatively 
to its subject, as when he says, I believe and know there is 
a personal God. 

If both these amendments were adopted, the supralapsa- 
rian and the doubter in regard to infant salvation, if such 
there are, would have no more difficulty in adopting the 
Confession, than the great mass of our ministers have now. 
JSo one would be put out of the synagogue, while many 
would be encouraged to come in. And above all, the whole 
Church would have the immense public advantage of con- 
forming her Confession to her faith. A dead law on the 
statute-book impairs the authority of all law. A doctrinal 
statement in our Confession, which the mass of our minis- 
ters and people do not believe, opens the door for unbounded 
license in subscribing to our Standards. For this very rea- 
son some are opposed to revision. But Dr. De Witt is not 
one of them • and I am not without hopes that he, with bis 
inherited zeal for the Presbyterian Church, and his broad 
scholarly attainments, will yet be found among the advocates 
of a conservative revision. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



V. 



DK. DE WITT ON DE. VAN DYKE'S 
KEJOIKDER. 

Dr. Van Dyke's rejoinder contains so much that de- 
serves observation, that if I did it justice, I should occupy 
more space than the Evangelist can lend me. Besides, I 
desire briefly to notice the amazing diversity in the pro- 
posals for revision already made in your hospitable columns. 
For these reasons I omit much I should like to say, and 
before noticing this diversity, confine myself to answering 
two questions which Dr. Yan Dyke puts to me. 

1. Dr. Van Dyke says that I did not remark on the new 
section, which he proposes as a substitute for one of the 
sections on the decree of God, and very properly asks 
whether my silence is to be understood as agreement with 
him in respect to that proposal. In reply I have to say 
first, that any criticism of this particular proposal, seemed 
in the circumstances unnecessary. I wished to illustrate 
the difficulty which even a trained, able, and learned 
theologian must find, in the endeavor to formulate confes- 
sional statements as widely acceptable as those of the Con- 
fession. I found abundant material for my purpose in his 
other proposed amendments. Having shown clearly, as I 
think I did, that these, if adopted, would make our Con- 
fession of Faith a narrower and less liberal symbol than it 
now is, I did all that I thought needed. It did not seem 
necessary to make evident, as I am now obliged to do, the 
infelicity of still another of his amendments. Secondly, 

(25) 



26 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



writing at a distance from my books, I hesitated to criticise 
at length this carefully drawn substitute for a section of 
the Chapter on the Decree. But thirdly, since Dr. Yan 
Dyke has emphasized, by reprinting, this particular exam- 
ple of revision, and puts the question, " Does your silence 
mean consent % " I have great pleasure in stating as shortly 
as possible my objections to his proposed new section, re- 
garded as a " Confessional formula." His proposed new 
section is as follows : 

" God's eternal decree hindereth no one from accepting Christ as He 
is freely offered in the Gospel ; nor ought it to be so construed as to 
contradict the declarations of Scripture that Christ is the propitiation 
for the sins of the whole world, and that God is not willing that any 
should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 

My objections are two : 

First. The proposed section quotes, without the slightest 
attempt to interpret them, two verses of Scripture, the 
meaning of one of which has for a long time been, and 
still is, debated among the ministers of our Church, who 
yet receive and adopt the Confession as containing the 
system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures. Dr. Yan 
Dyke knows very well that a Creed, or Confession of Faith, 
properly constructed, is not a response in Scriptural lan- 
guage to the language of Scripture. Indeed, it is a state- 
ment in dogmatic propositions, constituted of language 
other than that of Scripture, of the Church's interpretation 
of Scripture. The creeds, whether Ecumenical, Greek, 
Latin, Lutheran, or Eeformed, are conspicuously not in 
Scriptural language, for the very good reason that they are 
intended to be official expositions of Scriptural language. 
Dr. Yan Dyke's proposed amendment, being clothed in the 
language of Scripture, violates the fundamental, constitu- 
tive, and historical idea of a creed statement. 

Second. One of the two verses employed by him was 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



27 



one of the most often quoted and debated verses during 
that long and unhappy ecclesiastical controversy which be- 
gan before the Separation of 1838, and ended at the 
Reunion of 1869. The question of the meaning of the 
phrase, " for the sins of the whole world," was answered in 
one way by Old School, in another by New School, Pres- 
byteries. Finally, the Reunion came, and although the 
meaning of the verse is still most properly discussed by 
theological professors in their lecture-rooms, and by all who 
choose to do so, the entire subject has been taken out of the 
realm of our ecclesiastical disputes. But Dr. Yan Dyke 
selects this very verse, and notwithstanding this history, 
puts it in the Confession. He does nothing to help us 
toward its interpretation, but (with the most irenic of 
motives, I am sure) does the one thing of all best calculated 
to reopen the ecclesiastical debate which the Reunion has 
closed. He places it in the Confession at the point most 
likely to make Presbyteries, as Presbyteries, discuss the 
question, "What does it mean? In view of all this his- 
tory, I do most earnestly appeal to Dr. Yan Dyke, if he 
feels bound to propose an amendment on this subject, to 
formulate another. Of course, if he thinks that this verse 
in any way modifies the statement of the Catechism, " God 
having elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a 
covenant to bring them into a state of salvation by a Re- 
deemer," all will agree that since the Reunion he is entitled 
to hold that opinion. Or if he thinks the two statements 
perfectly concordant, he is entitled to say so. But he is 
proposing what in my judgment is dangerous, when he 
moves to insert, without interpretation, in the Confession 
an expression, which for many years was among us just 
what the Psalter of Finnian was among the Irish, a war- 
cry of two opposing clans. 
2. Dr. Yan Dyke is not sure that he understands what I 



28 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



mean by the phrase " private opinion," and the alternative 
phrase " a passing individual opinion." He is afraid that 
unintentionally I make the phrase "palter in a double 
sense." I have no right to complain of this criticism, for 
the use of the word " passing " was unfortunate. It may 
mean evanescent. Probably this is the idea that it would 
convey to most readers. - But this I did not intend to con- 
vey. By " passing individual opinion," I meant " current 
individual opinion," and this, whether evanescent or per- 
manent, whether exceptional or prevalent. 

With this explanation, let me say that I used the phrase 
" private " or " individual " opinion in its recognized and 
technical sense, the sense, I mean, in which it is contrasted 
with another technical phrase, dogma de fide. Both 
phrases have long been used. Sometimes, most often per- 
haps, the adjective "pious" is employed by Roman Cath- 
olic writers instead of the adjective " private " or " indi- 
vidual." But the meaning is obvious, and is always the 
same. There is, as there must be, a large and various body 
of opinion on theological subjects, formed by the devout 
or "pious," and "private" or "individual" study of 
learned men. These opinions are allowed by the Church. 
Never having been erected into " dogmas of the faith," 
never having been "defined" as doctrines and given a 
place in the creed, they are still only " private " or " pious " 
opinions. Some of them are held by only a few theologians. 
Others are prevalent. Some are likely to prove evanes- 
cent ; others to be permanent. Usually they are derived, 
not from explicit statements of Scripture, but from what 
those holding them believe to be implicated in the teach- 
ings of the Word of God. 

In this sense of the phrase, the belief that " all who die 
in infancy are saved " is, with us, a " private " or " pious " 
opinion. Nor would it be other than a private opinion, if 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



29 



it could be shown that every individual in the Church be- 
lieved it. For each individual throughout the Church is 
at liberty as an individual to hold or reject it. But put it 
in the Confession of Faith, and it will be a private opinion 
no longer ; it will be a dogma de fide. Our liberty of 
opinion on this subject will then be gone. Hope, expecta- 
tion, supposition, and all other states of mind in respect to 
dead infants, except assent to then* salvation, will be utterly 
out of place. If I have made my meaning clear, it is evi- 
dent that whenever a " private opinion " is made " a dogma 
of the faith," by being " denned " and placed in the creed, 
the creed in which it is placed is, so far forth, narrower or 
less liberal than it was before. 

I am glad that Dr. Yan Dyke has given me the oppor- 
tunity to explain my meaning in detail. As the Church is 
bound to discuss this question of revision, there is no dis- 
tinction more important to be remembered just now than 
the distinction between a " private opinion " and " a dogma 
of the faith." The very strongest reasons should be an- 
nounced and sifted and abide the sifting before the opinion 
is permitted to be denned as a dogma. The change ought 
not to be made without the clearest and most explicit war- 
rant of Scripture. We Presbyterian ministers and elders 
are doubly fortunate, first, in possessing a creed composed 
by men who understood thoroughly this distinction ; and 
secondly, in a form of subscription which places us in 
u genial relations " to the creed itself. 

Eome understands and has carefully observed this dis- 
tinction. If there is a church, which, on its theory and by 
its constitution, is in a position to multiply dogmas, it is the 
Eoman Catholic Church. It possesses an inspired " Yicar 
of Christ," and it possesses also a vast body of " tradition," 
on which it could draw for this very purpose. One might 
well have prophesied that its activity in their multiplication 



30 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



would be greater than that of the whole of Christendom 
except itself. But the Roman Catholic Church, of which 
Lord Macaulay long ago said, "There is not, and there 
never was, on this earth a work of human policy so well 
deserving of examination," has been most sagaciously care- 
ful in its exercise of this tremendous power. Since the 
Council of Trent was dissolved three centuries ago, only 
two " pious opinions " have been defined as " dogmas of 
the faith." The debates between Franciscan and Domini- 
can, between Scotist and Thomist, often in the thirteenth 
century raged around the question of the "Immaculate 
Conception of the Virgin Mary." From that date un- 
til 1854 — a period of five centuries of active discussion 
— when it was "defined" as a dogma of the Catholic 
faith, the question was left to be answered by private 
and pious opinion. So was the infallibility of the Pope, 
until 1870. 

But Rome has not furnished the model for our active 
and ardent revisers. There is another religious body, how- 
ever, to which the Roman Catholic Church in this particu- 
lar presents a striking and instructive contrast. This re- 
ligious body has a head like the head of the Church of 
Rome. But, lacking a vast body of tradition, it has been 
accustomed to supply that deficiency by an almost annual 
addition to its " dogmas of the faith." I am vividly re- 
minded, by the lightness and gaiety with which so many 
of my brethren are entering on the work of Confessional 
revision, of the abounding activity in the same direction of 
the Apostles and Chief Revelator of the Church of the 
Latter-Day Saints, commonly called Mormons. 

3. Having made clear, I trust, why I object to Dr. 
Yan Dyke's amendment, and what I mean by "private 
opinion," I wish, before concluding this letter, to call atten- 
tion to the remarkable diversities of attitude among writers 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



31 



favorable to revision as they appear on the pages of the 
Evangelist this very week. 

Here, first, is the Rev. Mr. Dulles, who wishes the Con- 
fession revised in such a way as to make it " a living one 
but who has no confidence in " patching " the present Con- 
fession — indeed, in nothing short of a new Confession, 
which shall express " what we now believe." Here, sec- 
ondly, is a letter which endorses the article of Elder Henry 
Day, who tells us that if he must find a reason for the de- 
cree of God, he will find it in the foresight of faith. Here, 
thirdly, is my valued friend Dr. Yan Dyke, who is against 
all such Arminianism, but who would also remove " the 
supralapsarian bias " from the Confession, and who 
would insert the statement, " All infants dying in infancy 
are saved." And here, finally, is my dear and honored 
Professor, Dr. Duffield, of Princeton College, who will 
not allow Dr. Yan Dyke his dogma concerning all who die 
in infancy, but who is ready to knock out " the supralap- 
sarian bias " from our most logical Confession, though he 
quotes without disapproval Dr. A. A. Hodge's remark that 
" supralapsarianism is the most logical scheme." 

Here is a diversity of tongues, indeed. Shall I say that 
it recalls the story of what once occurred on the plain of 
Shinar ? In the midst of it I take my stand on the plat- 
form so finely formulated by Prof. Warfield, of Princeton, 
and I beg to close my letter by quoting a portion of his 
most admirable paper : 

"Our free, but safe, formula of the Confession of Faith, by which 
we 'receive and adopt it,' as ' containing the system of doctrine taught 
in the Holy Scriptures,' relieves us of all necessity for seeking each 
man to conform the Confession, in all its propositions, to his individual 
preferences, and enables us to treat the Confession as a public docu- 
ment, designed, not to bring each of our idiosyncrasies to expression, 
but to express the general and common faith of the whole body, which 
it adequately and admirably does. 



32 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



" Enjoying this free, yet hearty relation to the Confession, we con- 
sider that our situation toward our Standards is incapable of improve- 
ment. However much or little the Confession were altered, we could 
not, as a body, accept the altered Confession in a closer sense than for 
system of doctrine ; and the alteration could not better it as a public 
confession, however much it might be made a closer expression of the 
faith of some individuals among us. In any case it could not be made, 
in all its propositions and forms of statement, the exact expression of 
the personal faith of each one of our thousands of standard-bearers." 

John De Witt. 

The Hill : Danville, Pa., July 20, 1889. 



X 



\ 



YI. 



REPLICATION OF DR. YAJST DYKE TO DR. 
DE WITT. 

It is wonderful how much our judgment of things de- 
pends upon the side from which we look at them. I have 
been greatly impressed with what seemed to me a remark- 
able agreement among the advocates of Revision. With- 
out any consultation, they are in substantial accord as to the 
things that need amendment ; differing chiefly in the forms 
of changes which have been offered as mere suggestions. 
But here comes the Evangelist of July 25th, in which 
Dr. De Witt declares himself equally impressed with " the 
remarkable diversities of attitude among writers favorable 
to Revision." He thinks this diversity amounts to a con- 
fusion of tongues, like that on the plains of Shinar. He 
detects a likeness between the advocates of Revision, and 
the " abounding activity in the same direction of the Apos- 
tles and Chief Revelator of the Church of the Latter-Day 
Saints, commonly called Mormons." He draws an unfa- 
vorable contrast between their desire for change and the 
conservatism of the Church of Rome, which in the three 
centuries since the Council of Trent has " defined only two 
pious opinions into dogmas of the faith." Let me assure 
my good brother that I have too much respect for him, and 
am too tenderly interested in the subject we are discussing, to 
be ruffled by these invidious, not to say odious, comparisons. 
I only wonder at them, and at the course of argument 
to which they belong, which seems to me at variance with 



34 " CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



the spirit of Protestantism and of the Presbyterian Church. 
It smells of the Dark Ages, and has the ear-marks of the 
Schoolmen. Doubtless the difference between Dr. De Witt 
and myself is due to our different angles of vision. But I 
know not whether to call his angle acute or obtuse, when 
one of the four witnesses he summons to prove the confu- 
sion of tongues among the friends of Re vision, is openly 
opposed to what he calls "patching up the Old Confes- 
sion," and in favor rather of making a new one ; though it 
is due to him to say that he claims to be exceptionally 
orthodox in preaching the doctrines of the Old. Of the 
other three witnesses, one is a layman and a lawyer, and 
uses popular rather than technical language ; but Dr. De 
Witt may rest assured that there is no substantial difference 
between Mr. Day, Dr. Duffield, and myself ; for we all 
hold the Calvinistic as opposed to the Arminian system of 
doctrine, and are loyal to the Confession of Faith accord- 
ing to our ordination vows. 

But suppose the diversity of our views were as great as 
it is represented, is it greater than what existed in the 
Westminster Assembly ? None knows better than Dr. De 
Witt how long and earnest were the debates in that Assem- 
bly ; how many of their doctrinal statements were compro- 
mises of conflicting opinions (notably the one about " elect 
infants ") ; and by how small a majority some of the arti- 
cles were adopted. And yet the result was a Confession 
which some of the opponents of Revision regard as so per- 
fect that after two centuries and a half of study it is inca- 
pable of improvement ; and so they join hands with those 
who desire, by keeping it unchanged, to break down the 
restraints of subscription, and practically to make the 
grand old creed simply a historic monument of the past. 
But inasmuch as the Word and Spirit of God are given to 
us even as to the Westminster divines, is it not reasonable 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



35 



to hope that the Revision of our Creed will lead to as good 
results in the nineteenth century as it did in the seven- 
teenth? 

How fatal is the force and fallacy of words. "We may 
not adopt the maxim that language is intended to conceal 
thought ; but certainly it often fails to convey the writer's 
meaning, even in the hands of such a trained master of 
sentences as Dr. De Witt. After much reflection and con- 
sultation of dictionaries, I came to the conclusion that by 
" private opinions " my courteous opponent meant opinions 
held by very few and not generally accepted, especially as 
he used the parallel expression "passing individual opin- 
ions," and protested against imposing such private opinions 
upon the conscience of the whole Church. It is true I 
had glimpses of another meaning, but was unwilling to at- 
tribute it to him, because it would utterly destroy the force 
and relevancy of his argument. But in this I was com- 
pletely mistaken. By " private opinion " Dr. De "Witt now 
tells us he means " a pious opinion," however widely held, 
as distinguished from a dogma de fide (dogma of the faith) 
recognized and defined by the authority of the Church, and 
incorporated into its creed, after the manner of the Roman 
Catholic Church in "defining" the immaculate concep- 
tion of Mary and the infallibility of the Pope. We think 
the illustration an unfortunate one, but let that pass. Now 
we understand each other. Dr. De Witt has a right to 
amend his pleading, and I accept the amendment. If he 
had done this at first, it would have saved a great deal of 
printer's ink. I admit fully that all the amendments to the 
Confession which have been proposed are "pious opin- 
ions," not yet " defined " and incorporated into our Creed 
by the authority of the Presbyterian Church. If they 
were there already, who would desire to put them there ? 
But with this understanding, what becomes of Dr. De 



36 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



Witt's argument against the proposed amendments upon 
the ground that they are " private opinions " ? It is a bald 
begging of the question under discussion, and amounts to 
an individual assertion that these amendments ought not to 
be adopted, because they are not already in the Confession 
— only this and nothing more. And the same remark ap- 
plies to the passage which my learned friend adopts and 
eulogizes from Dr. Warfield, provided of course he uses 
the terms " personal opinions," " individual preferences," 
and "idiosyncrasies," in the sense defined by Dr. De Witt 
of "pious opinions " not yet authorized by Church author- 
ity. But if he uses these terms in the common and pop- 
ular meaning, we deny that any friend of revision desires 
to put his private opinions or idiosyncrasies into the Con- 
fession. As to the proposition that our liberal terms of 
subscription render any revision unnecessary, it is alto- 
gether aside from the question before us. No friend of re- 
vision complains that the Church is too strictly bound to 
her creed ; we have all the liberty in that respect which we 
desire. But our contention is that the creed does not with 
sufficient clearness express the faith of the Church in cer- 
tain specified particulars. 

And this brings us to the most important part of Dr. 
De Witt's article — to the crucial point in this whole dis- 
cussion. In response to my friend's challenge, I ventured 
to formulate a statement to be inserted in the chapter on 
the Decrees, in these words : 

" God's eternal decree hindereth no one from accepting Christ as He 
is freely offered to us in the Gospel ; nor ought it to be so construed 
as to contradict the declarations of Scripture that Christ is the propitia- 
tion for the sins of the whole world, and that God is not willing that 
any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 

Dr. De Witt rejects and condemns this amendment on 
two grounds : 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



37 



1. Because it is expressed chiefly in Scripture language. 
He affirms that "being clothed in Scripture language, it 
violates the fundamental, constitutive, and historic idea of 
a creed statement/' I know not by what authority this 
canon was enacted, nor where it is recorded ; but I do 
know that it has been more honored in the breach than in 
the observance. The Apostles 1 Creed is a beautiful mosaic 
of Scripture phrases, without note or comment; and our 
own Confession contains many creed statements which Dr. 
De Witt, to be consistent, ought to condemn. I refer him 
to chap, ii., sec. 1 ; chap, vii., sec. 3 ; chap, xvi., sec. 2 ; 
chap, xxiii., sec. 1 ; chap, xxxiii., sec. 1. These and many 
other passages are clothed in Scripture language as thor- 
oughly as my proposed amendment. 

2. Dr. De Witt condemns and starts back in alarm from 
my amendment, because it contains " one of the most often 
quoted and debated verses in the long and unhappy contro- 
versy " between the Old and ~New Schools, the entire sub- 
ject of which verse, he tells us, " has been taken out of the 
realm of our ecclesiastical disputes." He thinks to put 
that verse into the Confession would be "dangerous": it 
would become again, what he says it was before, like " the 
Psalter of Finnian among the Irish clans." He appeals to 
me, if I feel bound to propose an amendment, to formulate 
another, omitting this dangerous text, which he seems to 
regard as a dynamite bombshell. I feel the force of his 
appeal, and respect, though I do not sympathize with, his 
fears. " Peace, brother ; be not over-exquisite to cast the 
fashion of uncertain evil." According to my recollections 
of that old controversy, which are probably more vivid 
than his own, not only this, but every other verse of Scrip- 
ture relating to the doctrines of grace, were often quoted 
and earnestly debated. That controversy, however we 
may regret the bitterness and division to which it led, was 



38 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



not altogether evil in its results. Our danger now does 
not lie in the direction of theological controversy, but in 
indifference to doctrinal truth, by which "the streaming 
fountain of God's Word sickens into a muddy pool of con- 
formity and tradition." I have yet to learn that the Re- 
union has relegated any verse in Scripture to the realm of 
private and pious opinion. The Bible itself is our primary 
standard of faith and practice ; the Confession is only sec- 
ondary ; and I do not believe that the transference of any 
text from the first to the second place, would imperil our 
peace. 

But now I do not insist upon the precise wording of my 
amendment, as was clearly stated when it was first pro- 
posed. It is the thing, and not the form, that I contend 
for. It is a sad fact, and a grief to many hearts besides my 
own, that our Confession does not contain one declaration 
of the infinite love of God to men, nor one declaration of 
what every Presbyterian, Old School or New, devoutly be- 
lieves, that Christ's sacrifice for sin is sufficient for all, 
adapted to all, and offered to all. We also believe that 
this fullness of the Gospel and its free offer, is perfectly 
consistent with all that our Confession and Catechisms 
teach about election and redemption, the assertions of 
Arminians to the contrary notwithstanding. If it is only 
the language of my amendment that offends and alarms 
my brother, let him find more acceptable words, express- 
ing the same ideas, and I will adopt them. But if he ob- 
jects to making this universally received " pious opinion " 
a dogma of the faith, then indeed we do differ so widely 
that no creed statement or subscription can bridge over the 
chasm. 

Henry J. Yak Dyke. 



VII. 



THE PRESBYTERY OF NEW BRUNSWICK AND 
THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION. 

At the June intermediate meeting of the Presbytery of 
New Brunswick, held on June 25th at Dutch Neck, the 
overture of the General Assembly anent the revision of the 
Confession of Faith was answered in the negative, nemine 
contradicente, as follows : 

" The Presbytery of New Brunswick, having carefully 
considered the overture in- relation to the revision of the 
Confession of Faith, proposed by the General Assembly, 
respectfully replies as follows : 

"This Presbytery does not desire any revision of the 
Confession of Faith." 

The reasons to be assigned for this answer, as proposed in 
a paper presented by Prof. B. B. Warfleld, were then taken 
up ; but, on account of lack of time for full consideration, 
were laid over until the October meeting of the Presbytery. 
These reasons have been printed by order of the Presbytery, 
that all who are interested may have opportunity to consider 
them before the Fall meeting. They are as follows : 

1. Our free but safe formula of acceptance of the Con- 
fession of Faith, by which we " receive and adopt it " as 
"containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy 
Scriptures " (Form of Government, XV., xii.), relieves us 
of all necessity for seeking, each one to conform the Con- 
fession in all its propositions to his individual preferences, 
and enables us to treat the Confession as a public document, 

(39) 



40 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



designed, not to bring each of our idiosyncrasies to expres- 
sion, but to express the general and common faith of the 
whole body — which it adequately and admirably does. 

2. Enjoying this free yet hearty relation to the Confession, 
we consider that our situation toward our Standards is inca- 
pable of improvement. However much or little the Confes- 
sion were altered, we could not, as a body, accept the altered 
Confession in a closer sense than for system of doctrine ; 
and the alterations could not better it as a public Confession, 
however much it might be made a closer expression of the 
faith of some individuals among us. In any case, it could 
not be made, in all its propositions and forms of statement, 
the exact expression of the personal faith of each one of our 
thousands of office-bearers. 

3. In these circumstances we are unwilling to mar the 
integrity of so venerable and admirable a document, in the 
mere license of change, without prospect of substantially 
bettering our relation to it or its fitness to serve as an ade- 
quate statement of the system of doctrine which we all 
heartily believe. The historical character and the hereditary 
value of the creed should, in such a case, be preserved. 

4. We have no hope of bettering the Confession, either 
in the doctrines it states or in the manner in which they are 
stated. When we consider the guardedness, moderation, 
fullness, lucidity, and catholicity of its statement of the 
Augustinian system of truth, and of the several doctrines 
which enter into it, we are convinced that the Westminster 
Confession is the best, safest and most acceptable statement 
of the truths and the system which we most surely believe 
that has ever been formulated ; and we despair of making 
any substantial improvements upon its forms of sound words. 
On this account we not only do not desire changes on our 
own account, but should look with doubt and apprehension 
upon any efforts to improve upon it by the Church. 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



41 



5. The moderate, catholic, and irenical character of the 
Westminster Confession has always made it a unifying doc- 
ument. Framed as an irenicon, it bound at once the Scotch 
and English Churches together ; it was adopted and contin- 
ues to be used by many Congregational and Baptist Churches 
as the confession of their faith; with its accompanying 
Catechisms it has lately been made the basis of union be- 
tween the two great Presbyterian bodies which united to 
constitute our Church ; and we are convinced that if Pres- 
byterian union is to go further, it must be on the basis of 
the Westminster Standards, pure and simple. In the inter- 
ests of Church union, therefore, as in the interests of a broad 
and irenical, moderate and catholic Calvinism, we deprecate 
any changes in our historical standards, to the system of 
doctrine contained in which we unabatedly adhere, and with 
the forms of statement of which we find ourselves in hearty 
accord. 



VIII. 



DR. VAN DYKE ON THE ACTION OF THE 
NEW BRUNSWICK PRESBYTERY. 

The action of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, in an- 
swer to the overture of the General Assembly on revision, 
viz. : " This Presbytery does not desire any revision of the 
Confession of Faith," together with a paper presented by 
Dr. Warfield, giving reasons for that answer, laid over for 
future action, has been widely circulated among the min- 
isters of our Church. However complete this document 
may be, as a summary of what can be said against the re- 
vision of our Confession, it does not fairly represent the 
views of those who are on the other side of the question. 
The following statements are therefore submitted to the 
candid judgment of all interested in the subject : 

I. The object of the proposed revision is not to change 
the system of doctrine taught in our Confession, nor to re- 
pudiate, modify, or dilute any one doctrine of that system, 
nor to " conform the Confession in all its propositions to 
individual preferences," nor to "bring each of our idio- 
syncrasies to expression." "We repudiate all such interpre- 
tations of our purpose. Our simple object is — by the cor- 
rection of certain ambiguities, omissions, and mistaken in- 
terpretations of Scripture — to bring our Confession into 
more perfect harmony with other Reformed Confessions, 
and to make it more complete as the expression " of the 
general and common faith of the whole body " of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States of America. 

II. The proposition that such a revision is impracticable 

(42) 



CONFESSIONAL EEYISIOIST. 



43 



cao be maintained only on one of two grounds : (1) That 
the work of the Westminster Assembly is perfect in itself, 
and in its adaptation to all time ; or (2) that after two 
centuries and a half of Bible study, and two centuries of 
theological training, the Presbyterian Church is less able 
now to give adequate expression to her faith than she was 
in the days of the Westminster Assembly. Both these 
hypotheses are absurd. 

III. The proposition that revision is unnecessary, in view 
of " our free but safe formula of acceptance of the Confes- 
sion of Faith," is disproved by three patent facts : (1) Fif- 
teen presbyteries have petitioned the Assembly for such a 
revision, and it is well known that these presbyteries em- 
brace but a small part of those who favor the movement. 

(2) Some of the arguments opposed to revision are among 
the strongest proofs of its necessity. We call the attention 
of our brethren to the article on this subject by Dr. Brigge, 
in the last number of the Presbyterian Review, and espe- 
cially to the following sentences : " I agree with Dr. War- 
field that the true relief for a church that finds itself too 
strictly bound to a creed, is simply to amend the strictness 
of the formula of subscription. I am in favor of such a 
movement in preference to revision, or a new creed, or a 
declaratory act." Dr. Briggs clearly discerns the alterna- 
tive presented to us, and because we desire to relieve the 
consciences of those fifteen presbyteries and their sym- 
pathizers, without such " a comprehension " as he advo- 
cates, we are heartily in favor of the proposed revision. 

(3) It should be borne in mind that our Confession is not 
merely the standard and test of ministerial orthodoxy ; it 
is a public document, the proclamation to the world of 
what the Presbyterian Church now believes. If it con- 
tains, or even appears to contain, anything which the whole 
body repudiates, or if it fails to embrace anything which 



44 



COKFESSIOKAL KEVISIOIST. 



Presbyterians, and Christians generally, accept as an essen- 
tial element of the Gospel which we preach, it ought in 
these respects to be amended, without regard to the terms 
of clerical subscription. The Church is more than the 
ministry. 

IT. JSTo one is competent to predict, much less to dic- 
tate, the precise form and extent of the revision, if it shall 
be accomplished. The amendments which have been pro- 
posed, or may yet be proposed, by individuals, or by pres- 
byteries, are simply suggestions. If among them there 
shall be found any " individual preferences," or " idiosyn- 
crasies," the fact that they are private opinions will neces- 
sarily prevent their adoption. But among the suggestions 
already made there are three which fully demonstrate the 
necessity and practicability of revision. 

(1). It is the common faith of the whole Presbyterian 
Church, as now constituted, and of the Eeformers, as ex- 
pressed in creeds more venerable than the Westminster 
Confession, that God foreordains men to eternal death 
simply and solely for their sins. Dr. A. A. Hodge says, 
in his "Consensus of the Eeformed Confessions": "It is 
no part of the Eeformed faith that God created men in 
order to damn them, nor that His treatment of the lost is 
to be referred to His sovereign will. He condemns men 
only as judge, for their sins, to the praise of His glorious 
justice " {Presbyterian Review, vol. v., p. 295). In order 
to make the confession of our faith more explicit on this 
point, and to take away all pretext for the charge that we 
hold the contrary doctrine, it is proposed to amend the 
third section of the third chapter, by inserting the words 
for their sins. Will any opponent of revision maintain 
that the addition of these words would mar the integrity of 
our Confession, or graft an " idiosyncrasy " upon this pub- 
lic document ? 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



45 



(2) . The whole body of the Presbyterian Church believe 
that all infants dying in infancy are elect, and therefore 
regenerated and saved. Dr. Charles Hodge says this "is 
the general belief of Protestants, contrary to the doctrine 
of the Komanists and Eomanizers " (" Theology," vol. i., 
p. 27). It is proposed to put the expression of this com- 
mon faith into our Confession. Does any one say that it is 
there by implication already ? Then we ought to relieve 
troubled consciences and silence gainsayers by stating it 
explicitly. Does any one say the salvation of all dying in- 
fants is only a pious hope, suggested, but not clearly taught, 
in Scripture? The advocates of revision do not believe 
this; but if it is the common faith of the Presbyterian 
Church, then we insist that our Confession ought to stand 
clearly neutral on the subject, and no longer sanction the 
popular impression that we hold the abhorrent doctrine of 
the damnation of infants by the ambiguous phrase " elect 
infants dying in infancy." 

(3) . It is the common faith of the Presbyterian body, and 
of the whole visible Church of Christ, that the salvation 
of the Gospel is sufficient for all men, adapted to all, and 
freely offered to all, and that the eternal decree of God 
hinders no one from accepting it. The Scriptures are full 
of proof-texts to sustain this proposition. It underlies and 
pervades all our preaching of the Gospel, and is the con- 
straining motive iu all the aggressive work of the Church. 
And yet there is not, in all our Confession, one declaration 
which clearly comprehends or alludes to the teaching of Scrip- 
ture on this point. The advocates of revision desire to 
amend the Confession in this particular. As to the asser- 
tion that it is not possible to frame a new statement on this 
subject which will correlate with the Confession as it is, or 
which will not mar the historic integrity of the venerable 
document ; this is just what the enemies of our Calvinistic 



46 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



system have always said, and what Calvinists have always 
denied. If the writer of this paper believed what has been 
said on this point by the opponents of revision, he would 
renounce the Confession as his standard, for the fullness 
and freeness of the Gospel is more precious to him than 
any historic monument. But he does not believe it. He 
has always read into the Confession, as perfectly consistent 
with the system of doctrine which it contains, the Scripture 
declarations that Christ is " the propitiation for the sins of 
the whole world," and that " God is not willing that any 
should perish, but that all should come to repentance." To 
relieve troubled consciences, to satisfy candid opposers of 
our system of doctrine, to promote the ultimate unification 
of the visible Church, which can never be accomplished 
upon any other basis, it is proposed to put into our Confession 
what we all believe concerning the fullness and freeness of 
the Gospel, in its sufficiency, adaptation, and offers to all 
men. It would be easy to suggest the form and place of 
the amendment, but it is enough for the present to insist 
upon its necessity and practicability. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



IX. 



PKOF. WARFIELD'S EEPLY TO DR. YAN 
DYKE. 

I have read with great interest the criticisms upon the 
paper which was presented by me to the Presbytery of 
New Brunswick, with which Dr. Yan Dyke has honored 
me in the Herald and Presbyter of July 31st. If I cor- 
rectly understand the drift of Dr. Yan Dyke's remarks, he 
argues that revision of the Confession is necessary ; and he 
is willing to rest this alleged necessity on three criticisms 
of the Confession, which he states. It does not seem 
proper for me to pass these suggestions by without remark, 
and the less so, that the three points which Dr. Yan Dyke 
has singled out are those which have been most frequently 
dwelt upon by those who advocate revision. "We may hope, 
then, that if these do not prove adequate reasons for un- 
dertaking the task, it may be admitted that there is little 
serious call for it in the churches. 

Probably, however, before entering into a discussion of 
these test criticisms, I ought to say a word in general 
about the New Brunswick paper, which has furnished oc- 
casion for Dr. Yan Dyke's article. Let this be as brief as 
possible. That paper was intended to bring together what is, 
in essence, a threefold argument against the necessity of 
revision — an argument which, and only, if founded on facts, 
ought to prevail. It was intended to urge the following 
points, viz. : (1) Revision is not necessary in order to ease 
the consciences of our office-bearers in accepting the Con- 
fession ; (2) it is not needed in order to correct any serious 

(47) 



48 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



infelicities in expressing the doctrines we profess ; and (3) 
it will throw difficulties in the way of the realization of 
hopes of church union, already being entertained by the 
Church. In all this there is no claim to perfection and in- 
fallibility for the Confession ; there is no arraignment of 
the right or power of the Church to undertake it. The 
question is a question of expediency. The point is, Does 
the Confession need revision in order to ease the consciences 
of our office-bearers in accepting it as a test of soundness, 
or in order to fit it to be our testimony to the truth of 
God, as taught in His Word, and our text-book of doctrine \ 
And the propositions which are defended are, (1) that as 
we accept it, as office-bearers, only for " system of doctrine," 
and it confessedly brings the system we profess to adequate 
expression, it does not need revision for the first of these 
reasons ; and (2) that as its statements of the truths that 
enter into this system are exact, full, complete, moderate, 
catholic, inclusive, and devout, it does not need revision for 
the second reason. If I properly understand Dr. Yan 
Dyke, he does not take issue with the first of these prop- 
ositions. He criticises my mode of stating it, indeed, as if 
it implied that advocates of revision desired change in the 
system of doctrine. This, "for himself, and as many as 
will adhere to him," he repudiates. The object of those 
for whom he speaks " is not to change the system of doc- 
trine taught in the Confession, nor to repudiate or modify 
or dilute any one doctrine of that system." Surely, then, 
we may say that Dr. Yan Dyke agrees that no change in 
the system of doctrine which the Confession teaches, or in 
" any one doctrine of that system," is needed. And that is 
my first contention. His whole case, then, is directed 
against my second contention, and is hung in the present 
paper on three selected instances, which he thinks "fully 
demonstrate the necessity and practicability of revision." 



CONFESSIONAL REYISION. 



49 



These three points concern the statement of the doctrine 
of reprobation ; the clause about " elect infants "; and the 
alleged absence from the Confession of sufficient recogni- 
tion of the universal provision and free offer of salvation 
in Christ. I cannot deny that Dr. Van Dyke has chosen 
his points well. The issue made by them is distinct ; and 
it is probably on these three points that the decision of the 
general question will turn. But if this be true, I cannot 
but think that as the Church (to use an old rabbinical 
phrase) " sinks herself down in the book " during the com- 
ing months, she will, on this issue, feel constrained to vote 
for no revision. Certainly, speaking for myself, I do not 
desire revision at these points, and feel bound to affirm 
that the Confession stands in no need of revision in any 
one of them — that the opinion that it does, rests on a mis- 
apprehension of its teaching — and that the alterations that 
have been proposed would certainly mar it, and leave it a 
less satisfactory document than it now is. I owe to myself 
some words in justification of my venturing to differ so 
materially from so ripe a scholar and so thoughtful a theo- 
logian as Dr. Van Dyke. 



I. 

The third chapter of the Confession, " Of God's Eter- 
nal Decrees," as it was the occasion of the overture of 
the Presbytery of Nassau opening the present discussion, 
so it has borne, thus far, the brunt of objection to the Con- 
fession. To me it appears, however, a most admirable 
chapter — the most admirably clear, orderly, careful, and 
moderate statement of the great mysteries of God's decrees 
to be found in the whole body of the Keformed Confes- 
sions. How, then, shall we account for the offence which 
has been taken with it of late ? I trust I shall be excused 



50 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



for saying it frankly : it seems to me to have arisen from 
a very strange confusion, involving both the doctrine of 
reprobation on the one side, and the purport of the West- 
minster Confession on the other. 

In order to explain what I mean, let me begin by re- 
minding the readers of the Herald and Presbyter that the 
Reformed doctrine has always distinguished (under various 
names) between what we may call pretention and condem- 
nation, and has always taught that pretention is sovereign 
(as, indeed, it must be, if election is sovereign), while con- 
demnation, a consequent only of pretention, is " for their 
sins." The sentence which Dr. Yan Dyke quotes from Dr. 
A. A. Hodge is perfectly, accurately expressed. " It is no 
part of the Eef ormed faith that God's .... treatment of the 
lost is to be referred to His sovereign will. He condemns 
men only ' for their sins, to the praise of His glorious jus- 
tice.' " But it is a part of the Reformed faith that pretention 
is sovereign, as Dr. Whittaker, in the age before the West- 
minster Assembly, clearly tells us : "Of predestination and 
reprobation it is our part to speak advisedly. But that the 
only will of God is the cause of reprobation, being taken as 
it is contrary to predestination, not only St. Paul and St. 
Augustine, but the best and learnedest schoolmen, have 
largely and invincibly proved." I do not know where this 
necessary distinction between the sovereignty of pretention 
and the grounding of the consequent condemnation on sin, 
is better put, in late writing, than in the late Dr. Boyce's 
(of the Louisville Baptist Seminary) "Abstract of Sys- 
tematic Theology," which I mention here chiefly to call at- 
tention to the fact that Dr. Boyce's treatment is precisely 
that, even in its peculiarities, of the great Westminster 
divine, Dr. Thomas Goodwin. I prefer, however, to quote 
here another Westminster divine — Dr. J ohn Arrowsmith — 
whose statement will serve to illuminate for us, not only 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



51 



the subject itself, but the treatment of it in the West- 
minster Confession, and thus supply us with a starting- 
point for its study. 

In his " Chain of Principles," Arrowsmith explains : 
" Preterition, or negative reprobation, is an eternal decree 
of God', purposing within Himself to deny unto the non- 
elect that peculiar love of His wherewith election is ac- 
companied, as, also, that special grace which infallibly 

bringeth to glory This description carries with it a 

clear reason why the thing described goeth under the name 
of negative reprobation, because it standeth mainly on the 
denial of those free favors which it pleaseth God to bestow 
on His elect." When speaking later of the " consequents 
of the forementioned denials," he comes to " 3. Condem- 
nation for sin," and says : " This last is that which, by di- 
vines, is usually styled positive reprobation, and is clearly 
distinguishable from the negative in that the one is an act 
of punitive justice respecting sin committed and con- 
tinued in. But the other is an absolute decree of God's 
most free and sovereign will, without respect to any dispo- 
sition in the creature. I call them consequents, not effects, 
because, though negative reprobation be antecedent to them 
all, it is not the proper cause of them. This difference be- 
tween the decrees Aquinas long since took notice of. 
' Election,' saith he, 1 is a proper cause, both of that glory 
which the elect look for hereafter, and of that grace which 
they here enjoy. Whereas reprobation is not the cause of 
the present sins of the non-elect, though it be of God's for- 
saking them ; but their sin proceeds from the parties them- 
selves so passed by and forsaken.' " The matter is capable 
of very copious illustration from the Westminster divines, 
but the demands of space forbid entering into it further 
here. Enough has been already quoted to point out that 
the Westminster divines had in mind, as, indeed, they 



52 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



could not fail to have, the very obvious and necessary dis- 
tinction between God's sovereign decree of pretention — 
" negative reprobation," as Arrowsinith calls it — which must 
be as free and sovereign as election itself, of which it is, in- 
deed, but the negative statement, and His dealing with those 
thus passed by, which depends on their deserts. The fact 
that men are sinners does not affect the sovereignty of pret- 
ention ; it only affects the treatment they are left to by 
pretention. If, for instance, out of the holy angels God 
chose sovereignly a certain number for some high service, 
involving special gifts of grace to them to fit them for it, 
the "leaving" of the rest would be just as truly "preten- 
tion" as in the case of fallen man; but the consequent 
treatment being but the "consequent," and not the "ef- 
fect," of pretention, would be infinitely different, seeing 
that it is the effect of the deserts, whatever they may be, in 
which they are found to be left. Consequently sm is not 
the cause of pretention ; election is the cause of pretention ; 
i. 0., the choosing of some is the cause that " the rest " are 
left. Sin is the cause, however, of how the preterited ones 
are treated. And to guard this the Westminster men were 
accustomed to use a phrase they borrowed from Wollevius, 
which affirmed that sin is not the causa reprobationis, but 
the causa reprobabilitatis ; that is, sin is not the cause of 
reprobation (otherwise the elect, who also are sinners, would 
be reprobates), but it is the cause of men being in a repro- 
batible state. These are not theological subtleties ; they 
are broad, outstanding facts of God's dealing with men ; 
and it is failure to note them that is causing much (not al- 
ways wholly intelligent) criticism of the Confession in these 
last days. 

So let us come back to Chapter III. of the Confession 
now, and note its structure. It opens with what is the 
finest and most guarded and most beautiful statement of the 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



53 



doctrine of God's decrees in general, that has ever been 
compressed into so small a space (Sections 1 and 2). Then, 
proceeding to the special decree, dealing with His crea- 
tures' destiny, it first asserts the fact that this sovereign, 
particular and unchangeable decree extends also over this 
sphere of the destiny of the creature (Sections 3 and 4) ; 
and then proceeds to outline God's consequent dealing with 
the diverse classes (Sections 5-7) ; closing with a caution 
against careless handling of such great mysteries (Section 
8) . Were this the proper occasion for it, it would be a pleas- 
ure to expound this marvellously concise, full, and careful 
statement of an essential doctrine, in detail. Now, how- 
ever, we are concerned only to ask what would be the effect 
of adopting the amendment to it proposed by Dr. Yan Dyke, 
who desires that the words "for their sins" should be in- 
serted into Section 3. " Will any opponent of revision," he 
asks, " maintain that the addition of these words would mar 
the integrity of our Confession ? " I answer unhesitating- 
ly, yes ; the insertion of these words into Section 3 would 
be an intolerable confusion of the logical order and exacti- 
tude of statement of this now beautifully ordered and care- 
fully phrased chapter. It would prematurely introduce 
the statement of the ground of God's actual dealings with 
one class into the statement of the fact that two classes 
are discriminated ; it would confound the treatment of pret- 
ention (which is sovereign) with that of condemnation 
(which is based on sin) ; it would throw the whole chapter 
into such confusion as to render (as Dr. Monfort in the 
same number of the Herald and. Presbyter sees) Section 
7 superfluous, while affording us but a sorry substitute for 
that richer section ; in the effort to prevent careless readers 
from misapprehending a plain and admirably ordered docu- 
ment, it would compel all careful readers to be offended by 
a bad arrangement and an insufficient theological discrimi- 



54 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



nation. Speaking for myself, then, I do not hesitate to say 
that the present form of Chapter III. suits me precisely, 
and that the proposed change would be unacceptable and 
confusing, and appears to me to rest only on an unwilling- 
ness to take the trouble to follow the Confession in the 
logical ordering of its matter. 

II. 

If the current misapprehensions of Chapter III. are re- 
markable, I think we may characterize the interpretation of 
Chap. X., Sec. 3, which finds a body of non-elect infants 
dying in infancy, implied in its statement, as one of the 
most astonishing pieces of misinterpretation in literary his- 
tory. It is so perfectly gratuitous as almost to reach the 
level of the sublime. And when Dr. Yan Dyke adduces 
" the ambiguous phrase, 6 elect infants dying in infancy,' " 
as sanctioning " the popular impression that we hold the 
abhorrent doctrine of the damnation of infants," and as, 
therefore, one of the three cases in which the necessity for 
revision is obvious, he renders it easy for us to reply that 
the Confession is certainly in no need of revision to guard 
it from a wholly unreasonable interpretation. 

The assertion that the clause in question necessarily im- 
plies, as its opposite, a body of non-elect infants dying in 
infancy, has been so often and so dogmatically reiterated of 
late years, however, that I shall need to ask the readers of 
the Herald and Presbyter to go with me to the text of the 
Confession before I can hope that they will credit my coun- 
ter assertion that such an implication is a total misunder- 
standing of it. Let us observe, then, that we are now deal- 
ing with effectual calling, not with election. All questions 
of election have been settled seven chapters back ; and this 
logically arranged Confession — the careful strictness of the 
logical arrangement of which has been made a reproach 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



55 



to it — is not a document to rebroach that question at this 
late and inappropriate point. Let us observe, next, that in 
the apprehension of the framers of the Confession, effectual 
calling is the first step in the application of redemption to 
God's elect. To them, and them only, is given this grace. 
But how ? " By His Word and Spirit " — and then a rich 
statement is made as to how this call works in and on them, 
so as that, though effectually drawn to Jesus, they come 
most freely and willingly. God's elect, then, are saved 
through the external call of the "Word and the internal call 
of the Spirit conjoined. But what if God's elect die before 
they are capable of receiving this external call of the Word ? 
Are they then lost % No, says Section 3 ; God's elect that 
die in infancy are regenerated and saved through the in- 
ternal work of the Spirit, without the intermediation of 
the Word, and so are all others of the elect who are inca- 
pable of receiving such an outward call. Now, observe : 
There is no such distinction in the minds of the framers 
of the Confession at this point as " elect infants dying in 
infancy," and " non-elect infants dying in infancy." The 
distinction in their minds is that between "elect infants 
that reach the adult state," who are saved by the " Word 
and Spirit," and " elect infants dying in infancy," who are 
saved by the Spirit apart from the Word. This is the an- 
tithesis that was in their minds when they wrote this 
phrase ; and they expected the reader to understand, as he 
read the words, " elect infants dying in infancy," that these 
were the opposites of those who, having reached adulthood, 
were saved by the intermediation of the Word. In short, 
" elect infants dying in infancy" is equivalent to "such 
elect infants as die in infancy," and not at all to " such in- 
fants dying in infancy as are elect." This is absolutely 
necessary to the progress of the thought. And this being 
so, the phrase does not start the question as to whether 



56 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



there are non-elect infants dying in infancy at all. To 
raise that question here is perfectly gratuitous ; and as it 
was not in the minds of the writers as they wrote this 
phrase, no proof that the majority of the Westminster di- 
vines believed that there were or might be non-elect infants 
dying in infancy, has any bearing on the interpretation of 
this passage. We deal with the Confession that they 
framed, and with what they teach in it — not with what outside 
of it they are known to have believed. And what they 
teach here is that all of God's elect that reach adult age are 
called by the " Word and Spirit," but such elect infants as 
die in infancy, and all others of the elect who are incapable 
of the outward call, are saved, apart from the outward call, 
by the Spirit's regeneration. How many there are — 
whether all or some of such beings — is a question wholly 
out of mind. The antithesis is that unless these infants die 
in infancy, or these others are really incapable of receiving 
the outward call, they cannot be saved without a knowledge 
of the Gospel — and that the fourth section goes on to assert. 
To raise any other antithesis here is to raise a false antith- 
esis, which was not in the minds of the writers ; and to 
make any inferences from this false antithesis is to read 
something of our own into the text. If we choose to raise 
such questions of our own, let us answer them ; the Confes- 
sion has not raised them, and does not answer them by 
statement or implication. 

This interpretation of the bare text is powerfully sup- 
ported by the history of the framing of this phrase in 
the Assembly. The chapter on effectual calling in the 
first form lacked Section 3, and therefore it was ordered 
(" Minutes," p. 134) " that something be expressed in fit 
place concerning infants' regeneration in their infancy" 
Observe, this is the point in the minds of the Assembly — 
the regeneration of infants in their infancy. What they 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



5? 



wished to do was to show that Sections 1 and 2 did not ex- 
clude those who die in infancy from salvation, by the asser- 
tion that the effectual call came through the "Word. It was 
the possibility and actuality of regeneration in infancy that 
they wished to assert, and this, and this only, they do assert, — 
without having in mind anything at all as to how many 
of infants dying in infancy are so regenerated, or implying 
anything at all about this matter, which they would have 
adjudged a wholly inappropriate subject to broach at this 
place. We read in the " Minutes " of debates about this 
section, but absolutely nothing of the debate turning on 
anything else than the memorandum quoted above sug- 
gests. The phrase that occurs once, "Proceed in debate 
about elect of infants " (p. 162), furnishes no ground what- 
ever for an opposite inference. In the absolute uncertainty 
of what is meant by the phrase, " elect of infants," it only 
tells us that Section 3 was carefully considered before it 
was finally accepted. All we know is, that it cannot mean 
anything inconsistent with both the memorandum which 
opened the debate and the formulated section which closed 
it. Dr. Yan Dyke has somewhere in his papers in the 
Evcmgelist said (if my memory serves me), that he is aware 
that this Section 3 was arrived at by a compromise. If he 
will be so good as to point out the evidence for this, he would 
confer a favor on scholars. I have searched the " Minutes " in 
vain for any signs of such a compromise. To show that West- 
minster divines differed as to whether all or only some of 
those who die in infancy are saved, is nothing to the purpose. 
There is no evidence that they had this matter in mind 
when this section was being debated. We know that they 
were intending to assert that death in infancy did not snatch 
the soul from the Saviour ; we know this is what they did 
assert. We have no right to infer' any compromise in the 
matter or any debates here held on any other subject. 



58 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



What has been said surely vindicates the Confession from 
the charge that revision is necessary at this point in order 
to prevent its teaching that there are non-elect infants dy- 
ing in infancy. Are the amendments offered in themselves 
acceptable ? A thousand times no, I should say. First, to 
insert a statement that all those that die in infancy are elect 
here, would be out of place and order. This is not the 
place to treat of who are elect and who are not, but of how 
God saves the elect. Secondly, to insert such a statement 
anywhere would be an unnecessary burdening of the Con- 
fession with an explicit statement of what most Presbyte- 
rians believe, indeed, but not all feel justified in asserting 
to be revealed truth. For myself, I believe with all my 
heart that all dying in infancy are saved, and I believe that 
I can prove it from Scripture. But I think it far better to 
leave the Confession asserting, as it does assert, that God 
saves all the elect, whether reaching adult age or dying in 
infancy, rather than to force into it a dogmatic definition 
of a doctrine which many among us still believe rests on a 
pious hope" rather than on clear Scripture. To do this, as 
Dr. De Witt has already unanswerably shown, is to move 
in the direction of narrowing our confessional basis, with- 
out necessity and without gain. The Confession already 
provides firm ground for all who believe that all those that 
die in infancy are elect, and it does this without dogmatism 
and without sacrificing its moderation and calm guarded- 
n ess of statement. Why sacrifice this ? Cui bono f 



III. 

I have left myself but little space to speak of the third 
test case adduced to prove the necessity of revision, and re- 
gard to the long-suffering of the Herald and Presbyter and 
to the patience of its readers leads me to curtail what I should 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



59 



like to say, contenting myself, for the rest, to referring 
those who may be sufficiently interested to a recent number 
of the Presbyterian Banner, in which I have treated the 
general matter which lies at the base of the present question 
— the Confession's treatment of the love of God to man. 
Here the following few remarks, additional to what I have 
there said, must suffice. Dr. Van Dyke complains that 
" there is not, in all our Confession, one declaration which 
clearly comprehends or alludes to the teaching of the Scrip- 
ture " on the sufficient provision and free proclamation of 
salvation for all men, and their accountability for rejecting 
it. I do not understand Dr. Yan Dyke to complain that 
all this is nowhere gathered up in a single statement, nor 
can he intend to complain that the Confession does teach 
(as it certainly does) the doctrine of " the limited " (or bet- 
ter, " the definite ") atonement. I understand him to mean 
that the Confession taken at large nowhere recognizes ade- 
quately the freedom of the great Gospel offer, and man's 
consequent responsibility for rejecting it. But certainly 
this is somewhat rationally charged. It can hardly be said 
that the Confession nowhere teaches that " the eternal decree 
of God hinders no one from accepting the Gospel," when 
everywhere the Confession teaches that God is not the au- 
thor of sin (would it not be a sin to refuse the Gospel ?), and 
that by the decree no " violence is offered to the will of the 
creature " (III. 1), nor is his liberty taken away (III. 1), 
and when it teaches that God freely proclaims the Gospel to 
all, as we shall immediately see. For to affirm that the 
Confession does not teach that the offer to all men is free, and 
that their acceptance of it would be saving, is to forget some 
of its most emphatic passages. The Confession indicates 
the duty of translating the Bible " into the vulgar language 
of every nation," on the ground that thereby, " the word of 
God dwelling in all plentifully, they may worship him in 



60 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort 
of the Scriptures, may have hope " (I. 8). Here is clearly 
asserted the duty of the free proclamation, and the value of 
the truth as proclaimed to all — that all may through it be 
brought to " hope." Again (VII. 6) it is declared that the 
ordinances of the New Covenant differ from those of the 
Old, in that the Gospel is held forth in them " in more full- 
ness, evidence and spiritual efficacy to all nations" — cer- 
tainly a broad enough basis for any preaching. But the 
Confession goes further than this, declaring with the great- 
est explicitness (VII. 3) that the Lord has "freely offered 
unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring 
of them faith in him that they may be saved." It may be 
asserted, without fear of successful contradiction, that this 
Section 3 of the seventh chapter actually contains all that 
Dr. Van Dyke asks, i. <?., a full recognition of the universal, 
sufficient provision and the free offer of salvation to all, 
alongside of the statement of its special designation for the 
elect, and I do not see what need there is for a repetition of 
it elsewhere. Nay, it may even be maintained that we al- 
ready have in the third chapter itself all the recognition of 
this freedom of proclamation which is appropriate in that 
place, it being not only declared in the opening of it that 
God's decree does not supersede man's liberty or responsi- 
bility, but also commanded at the end that the doctrine of 
predestination be not so preached as to deter man from 
seeking salvation, but only so as to encourage the seekers 
with the assurance that though it be they who are working 
out their own salvation with fear and trembling, yet it is God 
who is working in them both the willing and the doing ac- 
cording to His own good pleasure. The Confession requires 
that predestination be so preached " that men attending the 
will of God revealed in his word [there is the free offer], 
and yielding obedience thereunto [there is the recognition 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



61 



of personal responsibility], may, from the certainty of their 
effectual vocation [there is the recognition of God's hand in 
what is experienced only as their own work], be assured of 
their eternal election [there is the encouragement to further 
effort]." ~No wonder the splendid sentence follows : " So 
shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and ad- 
miration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant 
consolation to all that sincerely obey the Gospel." The or- 
der here is, (1) hear the Gospel, (2) obey it, (3) be encour- 
aged and comforted, because God's hand is certainly in it ; 
and that is (1) free proclamation of the word ; (2) responsi- 
bility in accepting it ; (3) praise to and confidence in God 
for His blessed work in us. I cannot, then, think the Con- 
fession in need of the third improvement which Dr. Yan 
Dyke proposes. It has it already spread over its pages and, 
especially in YI. 3, explicitly stated. 

In closing, then, I reiterate that I cannot but feel that 
the Confession, if it is to be judged by these three well- 
chosen examples, must be adjudged to be in no need of re- 
vision. And I cannot help noting that all of them seem to 
grow out of misapprehension of what the Confession does 
teach and how it teaches it. Why not so revise it as to 
make such misapprehension impossible, then ? I can only 
reply that no document can be framed which is incapable 
of being misapprehended by the careless reader, and I am 
bound to say that, in my judgment, the Confession cannot 

; be misapprehended in these points when carefully read. 

' Most of the presently urged objections have arisen prima- 
rily in the minds of enemies of Calvinism, whose misappre- 
hension (or misrepresentation) was a foregone conclusion, and 
have, by dint of much proclamation, been conveyed from 
them to us — for the best of us are not proof against outside 
influences. We have tested assertions of this kind, not as 
we should, by grounded and consecutive study of the whole 



62 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



document, but by momentary adversion to the passages 
specially attacked, with our minds full of the attack. And 
so we have seen the sense in them which we were sent to 
look for. The remedy is not to revise the Confession in 
the hope of rendering misapprehension of it impossible, but 
to revise our study of the Confession, in the hope of cor- 
rectly apprehending it. What the Confession needs is not 
revision, but study. And the present agitation will have 
been a boon to the Church, however it eventuates, if it 
brings the Confession even more into the minds of our 
membership ; if it applies its forms of sound words to our 
conceptions of doctrine, and lays its devout spirit alongside 
of our aspirations heavenward. For the Confession is not 
only the soundest, sweetest, most exact and moderate state- 
ment of doctrine ever framed. It is a revival document. 
It was framed by revivalists, in a revival age. And it bears 
a revival spirit in its bosom. He who feeds on it will find, 
not only his thought quickened and his intellectual appre- 
hension clarified, but his heart warmed and his spirit turned 
toward God. 

Benjamin B. "Wakfield. 



X. 



DE. YAN DYKE'S EEPLY TO PEOF. WAE- 
FIELD. 

I. 

De. Warfield's answer to my article in the Herald and 
Presbyter for July 31st, contains much excellent theologiz- 
ing, and is marked by the author's eminent ability. It 
must be confessed, however, that the pleasure which comes 
to me with everything from his affluent pen, is somewhat 
spoiled, in this instance, by his bearing toward those he op- 
poses, and especially by the way in which he accounts for 
their desire to have the Confession revised. In the follow- 
ing extracts the italics are mine. " Most of the presently 
urged objections [to the Confession] have arisen primarily 
in the minds of enemies of Calvinism, whose misappre- 
hension or misrepresentation was a foregone conclusion, 
and have, by dint of much proclamation, been conveyed, 
from them to us — for the best of us are not proof against 
outside influences. We have tested assertions of this kind, 
not as we should, by grounded and consecutive study of the 
whole document, but by momentary adversion to the pas- 
sages especially attacked, with our minds full of the attach. 
And so we have seen the sense in them which we were sent 
to look for. The remedy is not to revise the Confession in 
the hope of rendering misapprehension of it impossible, 
but to revise our study of the Confession in the hope of 
correctly apprehending UP By the courteous "we" in 
this passage the author evidently means the advocates of re- 
vision. And who are the men and brethren thus repre- 

(63) 



64 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



sented as taking their cue from the enemies of Calvinism, 
and ignorantly railing at the things they understand not ? 
They are not only the members of the fifteen presbyteries 
who have formally asked for the revision, and are not likely 
to be satisfied with being sent back to their books. To these 
must be added all who have avowed themselves in favor of 
the movement, or may yet take part in its advancement. 
Nor can we confine our view to the ministers and members 
of our own Church. The Presbyterian Church of Eng- 
land, after having lain at the point of death for more than 
a century, has felt constrained in the day of her revival, 
and as an essential condition of her continued life, to frame 
a new and simpler creed, which, in all that constitutes the 
real excellence of the old Confession, will not suffer by a 
candid comparison with it. The United Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland, with great unanimity, has put forth 
an orthodox and admirable declarative statement, practi- 
cally amending the Confession in the very points under 
discussion among us. The Free Church of Scotland is 
moving in the same direction. I feel sure that when he 
fully considers these facts, which in the heat of debate he 
seems to have overlooked, Dr. "Warfield will revise his con- 
clusions in regard to the causes which underlie the move- 
ment toward Confessional revision. It is too large to be 
ascribed to weakness or to ignorance. And I am equally 
sure that when we extend our views beyond the narrow 
and fading horizon bounded by the memories of the civil 
war in this country, the proposed revision will harmonize 
with the desire for Presbyterian tmity, if not with some 
particular effort for organic union. 

In the quiet woods where Dr. Warfield's articles have 
overtaken me, having no books bearing upon the subject 
but the Bible and the Confession, I have taken the remedy 
he prescribes, and read the Confession with the aid of his 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



65 



expositions ; but if the desire for revision be an evil disease, 
I have grown nothing better, but rather worse. It may be 
assumed, perhaps without presumption, that in sincerity of 
purpose, loyalty to the Calvinistic system of doctrine, and 
ability to comprehend our Confession, my mind is up to 
the average of the members, ruling elders, and pastors of 
our Church. If, after a lifetime familiarity with its teach- 
ings, I so grievously misapprehend the meaning of the Con- 
fession as to desire amendments which would narrow its 
scope, mar its beauty, and throw its whole logical order 
into confusion, is it 5 after all, so " admirably clear " upon 
the points under consideration as it is represented ? 

Before coming to the renewed discussion of these points, 
I must correct two or three mistakes in regard to my views, 
into which Dr. Warfield has unconsciously fallen. The 
first is small in itself, but puts me in an attitude which I 
am not willing to sustain. Dr. Warfield quotes, as from 
me, the phrase " for himself and as many as will adhere to 
him." I cannot recall, nor find by diligent search, such an 
expression in any article from my pen. Perhaps the quo- 
tation-marks are a mistake of the printer. My opponent 
is further mistaken in supposing that I assent to the propo- 
sition that " revision is not necessary in order to ease the 
consciences of our office-bearers in accepting the Confes- 
sion." If I have not attacked this statement at length, my 
dissent from it has been often intimated, and is now em- 
phatically repeated. But the most serious mistake is the 
broad assertion that the Confession, as it now stands, " con- 
fessedly brings the system we profess to adequate expres- 
sion." If this were so, what show of reason would there 
be for advocating a revision ? And what sort of a debate 
is that in which the main point in controversy is assumed, 
on one side, as granted ? The advocates of revision, while 
they admit and insist as strenuously as their opponents, 



66 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



that the Confession contains the system of doctrine taught 
in the Holy Scriptures, contend that it is inadequate ; that 
is to say, not on the square with the Scriptures in some of 
its doctrinal statements. Speaking for myself, I am in 
favor of revision (1) because as an exposition of Scripture 
the Confession is excessive on some points and deficient on 
others ; (2) because by its overstatements and omissions it 
puts the Presbyterian Church in a false light before the 
Christian world outside of our own bounds, and gives oc- 
casion for misunderstandings which could easily be re- 
moved ; (3) because it separates our theologians from our 
people by obscure passages which a change in phraseology 
would make plain without impairing the integrity of any 
essential doctrine ; (4) because it puts an unnecessary strain 
upon the consciences of some of our office-bearers who are 
just as sound in the faith, though not as learned, as the 
opponents of revision ; and especially upon the consciences 
of those who, by their training and office, are " represent- 
atives of the people (5) because as a dead law upon the 
statute-book weakens the force of all law, the rejected 
statements of the Confession impair its authority as a 
standard of orthodoxy and its strength as a bond of union ; 
(6) because in persuading our brightest young men to enter 
the ministry, and our best laymen to accept the eldership, 
notwithstanding their scruples about adopting the Confes- 
sion, the freeness of the terms of subscription is insisted 
upon until our liberty is in danger of degenerating into 
license ; and finally, (T) because some of the leading oppo- 
nents of revision advocate, as its alternative, such a loosen- 
ing of the terms of subscription as will make the old 
Confession nothing more than a historic monument. 

The advocates of revision have not undertaken to do it. 
They have suggested amendments simply to show that the 
Confession can be improved, not in its system of doctrine, 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



67 



but in its doctrinal statements. They have not insisted 
upon the precise form of these amendments. Certainly I 
have not attempted to revise the Confession, nor to show 
in detail how it should be done. With this understanding, 
speaking only for myself, I am willing to stake the issue 
upon the three positions Dr. Warfield attacks. This intro- 
duction is so long that it will be better to reserve my 
defense of these three positions for another article. 



n. 

The careful reader of Dr. Warfield's articles will observe 
that he begins his attack upon the proposed amendments of 
the Confession by adopting an amendment of his own. 
The third chapter, to which so much of this discussion re- 
lates, is entitled " Of God's Eternal Decree" This title is 
the key to the interpretation hanging at the door. But 
Dr. Warfield quotes it thus : " Of God's Eternal Decrees" 
This, of course, was not done with the intention of amend- 
ing it. Neither is it a slip of the pen or a typographical 
error, for the same mistake crops out repeatedly in his 
whole article, and may fairly be called an unconscious ad- 
justment of the subject to the exigencies of the argument. 
The argument on his side hinges upon the assumption that 
the decree of God, as denned in this chapter, is not singn 
lar, but plural. He insists upon the distinction between 
negative reprobation and positive reprobation ; that is, be- 
tween pretention or the purpose of God to pass by the 
non-elect, and His purpose to punish them for their sins ; 
the first being " an absolute decree of God's most free and 
sovereign will, without respect to any disposition in the 
creature." He quotes and approves the foregoing sentence 
from Dr. Arrowsmith, and refers to the writings of other 
Westminster divines to show that the Assembly "had in 
mind " this distinction between negative and positive rep- 



68 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



robation. But the truth is, the mind of the Assembly 
was very much divided in regard to this third chapter, and 
the best evidence of what was in their minds is the fact, 
strangely overlooked by Dr. Warfield, that, after a long 
and tough debate, the title of it was settled in the singular 
number. This decision is rigidly adhered to. It underlies 
the whole chapter, and must underlie its interpretation. 
" The most wise and holy counsel of his own will " in Sec- 
tion 1 is changed in Section 3 to " the decree of God," and, 
in Section 5, to "his eternal and immutable purpose"; but 
in this interchange of synonymous terms the singular form 
is carefully preserved. The decree of God by which Sec- 
tion 3 says "some men and angels are predestinated to 
everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting 
death," is one and the same with " the most wise and holy 
counsel of his own will," whereby He has " unchangeably 
ordained whatsoever comes to pass." This one counsel, 
decree, or purpose must therefore include not only the pret- 
ention of the non-elect, but their condemnation and pun- 
ishment ; for the predestination, both of the elect to life 
and of the non-elect to death, is the one expression of the 
one purpose or counsel of God's will whereby He has fore- 
ordained " whatsoever comes to pass." This is the theory 
of the third chapter. It recognizes no distinction between 
negative and positive reprobation. The counsel, pur- 
pose, or decree by which the elect are chosen, and the non- 
elect passed by, includes at the same time and upon the 
same ground the destiny of both classes, and "all the 
means thereunto." By changing the title of the chapter to 
" God's eternal decrees," and interpreting it upon that theory, 
Dr. Warfield has made himself liable to the same advice 
he gives to others — to go back and study his Confession. 

There is a marked difference in the treatment of this 
subject between the Confession and the Catechisms. In 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



69 



the latter the one decree or purpose is spoken of as the de- 
crees of God, and as " the wise, free, and holy acts of the 
counsel of his will." And these acts of the divine will are 
further represented as embodied in two covenants : the one, 
the covenant of life, established " when God had created 
man," and the other the covenant of grace, entered into in 
full view of the fact that " all mankind by the fall had 
lost communion with God, and were under his wrath and 
curse" (Shorter Catechism, Questions 12, 19, 20; Larger 
Catechism, Questions 12, 30, 32). We will not discuss now 
the significance of these differences, except to observe that 
they clearly indicate a difference of opinion in the West- 
minster Assembly which these varied statements were in- 
tended to compromise. There were then, as now, two op- 
posing theories in regard to the relation of God's eternal 
decree to the salvation or perdition of men, which, for the 
sake of unlearned readers, it may be well to explain in sim- 
ple language. 

The first maintains that God predestinates or foreordains 
men to life or to death, not as created and fallen, but sim- 
ply as creatable and fallible, and without regard to their 
condition or deserts as sinners ; or, in the language of Dr. 
Arrowsmith, which Dr. Warfield quotes with approbation, 
by " an absolute decree of his free and sovereign will, with- 
out respect to any disposition in the creatures. " This theo- 
ry is called " supralapsarian," which signifies before, or 
above, the fall. There is no doubt that this theory was 
held by many in the Westminster Assembly, especially 
among the Independents, who constituted the majority, 
and that it reached its legitimate conclusion and climax 
among their descendants in Eew England, in the old 
maxim, of which we heard so much in our youth, that " a 
man must be willing to be damned for the glory of God 
before he can be saved." 



70 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



The second theory maintains that men are predestinated 
to life or to death as fallen creatures ; that the elect are 
chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father 
in Jesus Christ, through sanetification of the Spirit (Eph. i. 
4 ; 1 Peter i. 2), and that the non -elect are left to the fore- 
seen consequences of their own sin, which sin " God was 
pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, 
having purposed to order it to his own glory " (Confession, 
Chap. YL, Sec. 1), and which consequences " had no less 
been certain, unforeseen." This theory is called " sublap- 
sarian," which signifies after, or under, the fall. There 
can be no doubt that this theory is distinctly recognized 
and taught in the familiar language of the Shorter Cate- 
chism, which declares that God " did not leave all mankind 
to perish in the estate of sin and misery" into which the 
fall had brought them ; but " having of his mere good 
pleasure from all eternity elected some to everlasting life, 
did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of 
the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an 
estate of salvation by a Redeemer." There can be just as 
little doubt that this theory has always prevailed in the 
Presbyterian Church of this country. Dr. A. A. Hodge, 
in his " Outlines of Theology," admits that the " supralap- 
sarian" is the most logical theory according to the ordinary 
rules of human judgment. But he proceeds to show that 
these rules cannot be applied to the mysteries of revelation ; 
that the supralapsarian theory is unscriptural ; that the elect 
are chosen and the non-elect passed by, out of the number 
of fallen and actually sinful men ; that predestination in- 
cludes reprobation in both its negative and positive aspects, 
and that to represent God as reprobating the non-elect by a 
sovereign act, without respect to the fact that they are sin- 
ners, is to impeach the righteousness of God. I do not 
pretend to quote him with verbal accuracy, but feel sure 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



71 



that I do not misrepresent his meaning. From his " Consen- 
sus of the Reformed Creeds," I quoted in the Herald and 
Presbyter of July 31st, the following sentence : " It is no 
part of the reformed faith that God created men in order 
to damn them, nor that His treatment of the lost is to be 
referred to His sovereign will. He condemns men only as 
a judge for their sins to the praise of His glorious justice " 
(Presbyterian Review, vol. v., p. 296). In repeating 
this passage Dr. Warfield omits the italicised clause. Per- 
haps the disjunctive "nor" warrants his doing so. But 
the omitted phrase, " that God created men in order to 
damn them," is the popular and just description of the 
" supralapsarian " theory, which it was evidently Dr. 
Hodge's intention to repudiate and condemn as no part of 
the reformed faith. The use Dr. Warfield makes of the 
remainder of the passage is a refined subtlety I cannot ac- 
cept. He tells us that " pretention," or the passing by of 
the non-elect, is no part of their treatment. Now, I will 
not dispute with my learned opponent about the meaning 
of a word, but, illustrating divine things by human — which 
is the only way we can apprehend them — if I see two men 
drowning, and having the ability to save both, resolve to 
save one and not the other, by that resolution I have 
treated the other in a way that cannot be justified by my 
simple resolution. And though we are not able, and are 
not required, to " justify the ways of God to men " in this 
particular, wc have no warrant in Scripture or in reason to 
refer it simply to the sovereignty of His will. 

It may be true, as Dr. Warfield affirms, that " the fact 
that men are sinners does not affect the sovereignty of pret- 
ention "; but, then, sovereignty is not the only attribute 
of the divine will— which is bu**- another name for God's 
whole nature in action. He is holy, just, and merciful, as 
well as sovereign, and these attributes belong to every act 



72 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



of His will, and every purpose which determines those 
acts ; in short, they pervade and control every part and 
phase of that one comprehensive decree which includes 
"whatsoever comes to pass." To say that pretention is 
"an absolute decree of God's most free and sovereign will, 
without respect to any disposition in the creature," is to 
say, in other words, that God creates men in order to damn 
them. It is true, and I devoutly believe, that the elect 
"are chosen in Christ out of God's mere free grace and 
love, without any foresight of faith, or any other thing in 
the creature, as conditions, or causes, moving him there- 
unto" (Chap. III., Sec. 5). But even if we admit the 
inference that the foreseen sins of the non-elect are not the 
moving cause of their being passed by, it by no means fol- 
lows that pretention is " without respect to any disposition 
in the creature." There are necessary conditions which 
are not moving causes. Aside from its theological bearing, 
the " supralapsarian " theory is founded on an abuse of 
human language, and imposes impossible conditions on 
human thought. To say that God decrees to save some, 
and not to save others, without respect to the fact that they 
are all sinners, lost and ruined in the fall, is about as 
reasonable as it would be to say that the humane society 
had resolved to save some, and not to save others, from 
drowning, without respect to the fact of their being in the 
water. The Scripture says that " we are chosen in Christ 
Jesus that we might become holy and without blame." 
We must, therefore, have been considered as unholy and 
Uameable when we were chosen. 

Now, let us apply these principles to the revision of the 
third chapter of the Confession. The first and second sec- 
tions are complete in themselves — "express and admira- 
ble." Though I do not see in them all the sweetness and 
revival influences which Dr. Warfield sees, my intellect 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



73 



submits to, and my heart approves, the majesty of their 
truth, especially when I read them in the light of the 
Catechism, and with the aid of the distinction between 
God's permissive and active decrees (Larger Catechism, Q. 
19). But the third section, regarded as an independent 
proposition, I utterly reject. It is " supralapsarian." It is 
out of harmony with the general teaching of our Stand- 
ards. It is not believable to most of our ministers and 
people, except as we read into it what I propose to insert 
as a permanent amendment, so that its concluding clause 
will read : " And others foreordained, for their sins, to 
everlasting death." It is true that this little phrase, so big 
with meaning, occurs in the seventh section, and if that 
section is retained the phrase would be repeated. I fail to 
see, however, that this repetition would mar the beauty of 
the chapter, or create such a horrible confusion in its log- 
ical order, as Dr. Warfield apprehends. Clearness of mean- 
ing is the first quality of a logical order and of a good 
style. It is always better to repeat than to run the risk of 
being misunderstood. But I propose to make this amend- 
ment of the third section in connection with the proposal 
to omit the fourth and seventh sections entirely. These 
sections contain inferences from the doctrine of the chapter 
which, however logical, are not essential parts of the doc- 
trine itself, and put a stumbling-block in the way of many 
who thoroughly believe that doctrine. There are a multi- 
tude of such inferences, which, if they were all put into 
our Confession, would make every chapter as long as a book 
of Calvin's " Institutes," and narrow the document in an 
inverse ratio to its enlargement. I further propose to sup- 
ply the places of the omitted sections by some such state- 
ment as the following : " God's eternal decree hindereth no 
man from accepting Christ, as He is freely offered to us in 
the Gospel ; nor ought it to be so construed as to contradict 



74 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



the declarations of Scripture, that Christ is the propitiation 
for the sins of the whole world, and that God is not willing 
that any should perish, but that all should come to repent- 
ance." Now, let any man read this third chapter of the 
Confession, as thus amended, and if it appears to him that 
its beauty is marred, its sweetness lessened, its order con- 
fused, or the integrity of its doctrine impaired by the 
change, I can only say that both my taste and my ortho 
doxy differ from his. And so let us agree to differ in the 
embrace of God's love, and in the exercise of the charity 
it inspires. I shall be compelled to try the patience of the 
readers of the Herald and Presbyter by another article. 



in. 

In regard to the phrase, " elect infants dying in infancy " 
(Chapter X., Section 3), I have taken two positions : that it 
was adopted as a compromise, and that it is ambiguous. 
The first is quite unimportant, and would be surrendered, 
but for Dr. War field's saying that the proof of it would 
" confer a great favor upon scholars." With this challenge 
he lays down a new and strange law as to the competency 
of testimony in the case. He tells us that "it is nothing 
to the purpose to show that the Westminster divines dif- 
fered as to whether all, or only some, who die in infancy 
are saved," because " there is no evidence that they had 
this matter in mind when this section was debated." Does 
he forget that a little while before, when discussing the 
third chapter of the Confession, he undertook to demon- 
strate what " the Westminster divines had in mind," by 
quoting not only from their works, but from the works of 
men who lived in the preceding age ? But let that pass ; 
we are not discussing the principles of logic, nor the ques- 
tion of personal consistency. 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



75 



He says again : " There is an absolute uncertainty as to 
what is meant by the phrase 'elect of infants.' All we 
know is, that it cannot mean anything inconsistent with 
both the memorandum that opened the debate and the 
formulated section which closed it." I answer this astound- 
ing deliverance, and at the same time present the proof 
that the formulated conclusion was a compromise, by the 
following quotation from Dr. Mitchell : " This statement 
(elect infants dying in infancy), it has been averred, neces- 
sarily implies that there are non-elect infants dying in 
infancy who are not regenerated and saved. It does not 
seem to me, when fairly interpreted, to imply any such 
thing. It might have been susceptible of such an inter- 
pretation had it been allowed to stand in the form which 
it appears to have borne in the draft first brought into the 
Assembly — elect of infants, not elect infants " (" The West- 
minster Assembly," p. 397). The meaning of the phrase 
" elect of infants " is not uncertain, nor is the formulated 
conclusion of the debate identical with it. That conclusion 
was evidently a compromise. The word is not used in 
any offensive sense, but simply to express the idea that the 
phrase "elect infants" was substituted for "elect of in- 
fants," after long debate, to bring together and cover the 
conflicting opinions that all dying infants are saved, and 
that only some of them are saved. It is, therefore, ambig- 
uous ; it may be interpreted either way, and was so in- 
tended to be. Dr. Warfield admits this, and, indeed, it is 
the very ground upon which he defends the statement of 
the Confession as it now stands, and says " a thousand times 
no" to all proposed amendments. For himself, he "be- 
lieves with all his heart that all dying in infancy are saved, 
and that he can prove it from Scripture "; but he would 
not have his own faith, and what Dr. Hodge declares to be 
the common faith of the Protestant world, put into the 



76 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



Confession, lest it should offend some who may not have 
" like precious faith." It is devoutly to be wished that he 
would consent, in the exercise of the same comprehensive 
charity, to amend out of the Confession some things which 
the great majority of the Protestant world and of the Pres- 
byterian Church do not believe. 

Dr. Warfield's labored argument to show that the Con- 
fession, as it now stands, " does not necessarily imply a 
body of non-elect infants dying in infancy," has no perti- 
nence to anything that has been said by the advocates of 
revision. Certainly no such statement has fallen from my 
pen. But I do say that the ambiguous phrase "elect 
infants" sanctions — that is to say, it gives color, plausi- 
bility, and force to — the popular impression that Presby- 
terians believe the abhorrent doctrine of the damnation of 
infants. This is a simple and patent fact. If it were true 
that all who stumble at the phrase "elect infants" are 
ignorant or insincere, that is no reason why we should not 
remove the stumbling-block, when it can be done so easily 
and without in anywise impairing our doctrine. While 
the change of elect into all would be most acceptable 
to me, I do not insist upon this form of the amendment, 
and am entirely willing to accept the suggestion of Dr. 
Monfort and others, and let the section read, "All elect 
persons who are incapable of being outwardly called," etc. 
But Dr. Warfield asks, Cui bono ? — what's the use of any 
amendment ? Answer : (1) It will put away a bone of con- 
tention and a rock of offence. (2) It will silence gainsay- 
ing and remove reproach. (3) It will bring comfort to 
tender consciences and sorrowful hearts. (4) It will re- 
lieve our theologians from the onerous task of repeating to 
successive generations the same old explanations, which, to 
the popular mind, do not explain, but leave the problem 
as dark as it was before. u Elect infants" is not a Bible 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



77 



phrase. It belongs to the cloister. Let it be handed over 
to the ecclesiastical museum. 

We come now to the third, and, in my judgment, the 
most important amendment suggested to show the necessity 
for revision. It refers to a radical defect in the Confession, 
considered as a whole, and in regard to its suitableness to be 
the banner and symbol of the Church in this pre-eminently 
missionary age, as distinguished from the age of the West- 
minster Assembly. Of course, we all believe — if we use 
words accurately — in a definite atonement. The atonement 
is limited, in fact, to those who receive it. But Christ did 
more than make an atonement. He offered a sacrifice and 
satisfaction to divine justice which is infinite in its own na- 
ture, and as an expression of God's love for the whole world. 
From that love no individual of the human race, elect or 
non-elect, is excluded. I do not believe that God hated 
Esau (Rom. ix. 13), or that that Christ who is the express 
image of the Father, hated the reprobate inhabitants of 
Jerusalem over whom He wept, in any other sense than that 
in which we are required to "hate father and mother" in 
order to be His disciples. Now, I affirm, and challenge proof 
to the contrary, that our Confession of Faith — excellent and 
admirable as it is in other respects — does not contain one 
declaration of the infinite love of God for all men as it is re- 
vealed in the Gospel, or one declaration of the infinite full- 
ness of the Gospel salvation as sufficient, suitable, and offered 
to all sinners, or one declaration which clearly comprehends, 
or even alludes to, the teaching of Scripture on these points. 
And if it contains no one declaration which covers all, or any, 
of these points, then it does not cover them as a whole, for the 
whole is no greater than the sum of its parts. Dr. Warfield's an- 
swer to this charge is a remarkable example of ability to draw 
conclusions which are not in the premises. Let me beg the 
patience of our readers for a review of his arguments in detail. 



78 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



1. In the proposed amendment on the subject we are now 
considering, it is affirmed that " God's eternal decree hinders 
no one from accepting Christ as He is freely offered to all 
sinners in the Gospel." Dr. Warfield meets this by quot- 
ing from Chap. III., Sec. 1, the declaration that " God is 
not the author of sin," and asks, triumphantly : " Would it 
not be a sin to refuse the Gospel ? " I reply, that if a man 
is hindered by a divine decree from accepting the Gospel, 
he cannot refuse it, and there would be no sm in his not 
doing what Almighty God prevented him from doing. To 
be hindered from accepting, and to refuse to accept, are 
not synonymous, or even reconcilable, terms. This vicious 
circle does not touch the question. The statement that 
" no violence is offered to the will of the creature " comes 
nearer the point. It implies that God's decree does not 
hinder any man's acceptance of the Gospel. This has 
never been denied by me ; but what I contend for is, that 
a truth so vital ought to be in the Confession, not merely 
as an inference which a logician can draw out of it, but as 
a clear and explicit statement which he who runs may read. 

2. Dr. Warfield affirms that the Confession teaches that 
" God freely proclaims the Gospel to all, as we shall pres- 
ently see." And then he proceeds to cite passages in which 
the word " all," or any equivalent of it, does not occur, ex- 
cept in one, and there its antecedent and equivalent is " na- 
tions," and not every sinner of the human race. He quotes 
from Chapter I., Section 8, the declaration that the Scrip- 
tures " are to be translated into the language of every na- 
tion into which they come ; that the word of God, dwelling 
plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable 
manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scrip- 
tures, may have hope." But does this prove that the Con- 
fession contains " one declaration which clearly comprehends 
or alludes to the teaching of Scripture on the sufficient pro- 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 79 

vision and free proclamation of salvation for all men " ? As 
well might we insist that the Articles of the Methodist 
Church (if they teach the duty of translating the Scriptures 
into all languages, as I believe they do) contain a clear 
declaration of the Calvinistic system of doctrine which, as 
we believe, is taught in the Holy Scriptures. 

3. He quotes again from Chapter VII., Section 6, the 
declaration that " the ordinances of the new covenant differ 
from those of the old in that the Gospel is held forth in 
them in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy to all 
nations." On this I will make no comment. 

4. The last citation which he makes, in his judgment 
settles the question. He says : " It may be asserted, with- 
out fear of successful contradiction, that this Section 3 of 
Chapter VII. contains all that Dr. Van Dyke asks, i. a 
full recognition of the universal sufficient provision and 
the free offer of salvation to allP But does it % Let us 
quote the whole section : " Man, by his fall having made 
himself incapable of life by that covenant [the covenant of 
works], the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly 
called the covenant of grace, wherein he freely offered 
unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring 
of them faith in him that they may be saved, promising 
to give unto all those that are ordained unto life the Holy 
Spirit to make them willing to believe." Now, on the face 
of it, this section says not one word about, nor makes the 
least allusion to, the universal sufficient provision of salva- 
tion for all. It does not even affirm that the Gospel is of- 
fered to all sinners. But let us look a little further and 
see what this covenant is wherein life and salvation are 
freely offered to sinners. Surely the offers here spoken of 
cannot go beyond the intent and purpose of the covenant 
wherein they are made, even as the stream cannot rise 
higher than its fountain. The second covenant is thus de- 



80 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



scribed in the Shorter Catechism, Q. 20: "God, having 
out of his mere good pleasure from all eternity, elected 
some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace 
to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to 
bring them into an estate of salvation by a Bedeemer." 
Now, I submit to Dr. Warfield that he has not made out 
his case. Neither this nor any other section of the Con- 
fession which he has quoted contains the declarations in re- 
gard to which I have said the Confession is deficient. 

It is hardly needful for .me to say that I thoroughly be- 
lieve in the special love of God for some — that is, for the 
elect — and gladly admit that the Confession contains the 
best statement of this doctrine ever formulated by unin- 
spired men. But I believe also, and so does Dr. Warfield, 
in the infinite love of God/br all sinners, including the 
non-elect, even the love that yearned over Ephraim and 
wept over Jerusalem, and says to all the impenitent, " How 
often would I have gathered you, and ye would not." As 
the banner of a missionary Church, and a professed state- 
ment of the whole system of doctrine taught in the Holy 
Scriptures, the Confession ought to contain some clear, ex- 
plicit, and luminous declaration of a truth which underlies 
all true preaching of the Gospel and all Christian activity 
for the conversion of the world. Its deficiency in this re- 
gard is real and not imaginary. It is far better to admit 
and seek to amend this defect than to deny or defend it by 
far-fetched arguments and doubtful inferences. Some such 
amendments as I have proposed to the third chapter, which 
is the proper place to insert it, would neither mar the Con- 
fession nor impair our orthodoxy. But it would take away 
a reproach from the name of Calvinism and bring our 
Standards nearer to the faith, the love, and the zeal of the 
Church. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



XI. 



LETTER BY PROF. SHEDD. 

The question whether the "Westminster Confession shall 
be revised, has been properly referred to the whole Church 
represented by the Presbyteries. The common sentiment 
of the denomination must determine the matter. The ex- 
pression -of -opinion during the few months prior to the 
Presbyterial action is, therefore, of consequence. It is de- 
sirable that it should be a full expression of all varieties of 
views, and as a contribution toward it, we purpose to assign 
some reasons why the revision of the Confession is not ex- 
pedient. 

1. In the first place it is inexpedient, because in its ex- 
isting form as drawn up by the Westminster Assembly it 
has met, and well met, all the needs of the Church for the 
past -two centuries. The Presbyterian Church in the 
United States since 1700 has passed through a varied and 
sometimes difficult experience. The controversies in the 
beginning between the Old and New Lights, and still more 
the vehement disputes that resulted in the division of the 
Church in 1837, have tried the common symbol as severely 
as it is ever likely to be. But through them all both theo- 
logical divisions were content with the Confession and Cate- 
chisms as they stood, and both alike claimed to be true to 
them. Neither party demanded a revision on any doctrinal 
points ; and both alike found in them a satisfactory expres- 
sion of their faith. What is there in the Presbyterian 
Church of to-day that necessitates any different statement 
of the doctrine of decrees, of atonement, of regeneration, 

(81) 



82 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISIOTT. 



or of punishment, from that accepted by the Presbyterian 
Church of 1837 or 1789 ? Are the statements upon these 
points any more liable to misconception or misrepresenta- 
tion by non-Calvinists now than they were fifty or a hun- 
dred years ago ? Are there any more " weak consciences " 
requiring softening explanations and relaxing clauses in the 
Church of to-day than in former periods ? And with ref- 
erence to the allowable differences of theological opinion 
within the Presbyterian Church, is not a creed that was 
adopted and defended by Charles Hodge and Albert Barnes 
sufficiently broad to include all who are really Calvinistic 
and Presbyterian in belief % What is there, we repeat, in 
the condition of the Presbyterian Church of to-day that 
makes the old Confession of the past two hundred years 
inadequate as a doctrinal Standard % All the past successes 
and victories of Presbyterianism have been accomplished 
under it. Success in the past is guaranty for success in the 
future. Is it not better for the Church to work on the 
very same old base, in the very same straight line % 

2. Revision is inexpedient, because the reunion of the 
two divisions of the Church was founded upon the Confes- 
sion as it now stands. A proposition to unite the two 
branches of Presbyterianism by first revising the West- 
minster documents would have failed, because in the re- 
vision individual and party preferences would have shown 
themselves. But when the Standards, pure and simple, 
were laid down as the only terms of union, the whole mass 
of Presbyterians flowed together. It is to be feared that if 
a revision of the Confession should take place, there will 
be a dissatisfied portion of the Church who will prefer to 
remain upon the historic foundation ; that the existing 
harmony will be disturbed ; and that the proposed meas- 
ures for union with other Presbyterian bodies will fall 
through. 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



83 



3. Kevision is inexpedient, because it will introduce 
new difficulties. The explanations will need to be explained. 
The revision that is called for is said by its more conserva- 
tive advocates, not to be an alteration of the doctrine of the 
Confession, but an explanation only. Now good and 
sufficient explanations of a creed require more space than 
can be afforded in a concise symbol intended for use in in- 
ducting officers and members. Such full and careful ex- 
planations have been made all along from the beginning, 
and the Presbyterian Board of Publication has issued a 
large and valuable library of them. No one need be in 
any doubt respecting the meaning of the Confession who 
will carefully peruse one or more of them. He who is not 
satisfied with the Westminster doctrine as so explained, will 
not be satisfied with it at all. But if brief explanations are 
inserted into the Confession itself, their brevity will inevi- 
tably expose them to misunderstanding and misconception. 
Take an illustration. An able minister and divine, whose 
Calvinism is unimpeachable, suggests that Confession III. 3 
shall read, u By the decree of God, for the manifestation of 
His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto 
everlasting life, and others foreordained [for their sins] to 
everlasting death." If the clause in brackets is inserted 
without further explanation, the article might fairly and 
naturally be understood to teach that the reason why God 
passes by a sinner in the bestowment of regenerating grace 
is the sinner's sin. But St. Paul expressly says that the 
sinner's sin is not the cause of his non-election to regener- 
ation. " The children being not yet born, neither having 
done any good or evil, it was said, the elder shall serve the 
younger. Esau have I hated " (Pom. x. 11-13). The rea- 
son for the difference between the elect and non-elect is not 
the holiness or the sin of either of them, but God's sover- 
eign good pleasure. " He hath mercy on whom He will 



84 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth " (Rom. ix. 
18). An explanation like this, without further explanation 
such as the proposer would undoubtedly make, would not 
only contradict Scripture, but change the Calvinistic doc- 
trine into the Arminian. The reason for non-election 
would no longer be secret and sovereign, but known and 
conditional. All this liability to misconstruction is avoided 
by the Confession itself as it now stands. For in Confes- 
sion III. 7, after saying that the " passing by " in the bestow- 
ment of regenerating grace is an act of God's sovereign 
pleasure, a whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as 
He pleaseth," it then adds that " the ordaining to dishonor 
and wrath " is " for sin." Sin is here represented as the 
reason for the judicial act of punishment, but not for the 
sovereign act of not regenerating. The only reason for the 
latter, our Lord gives in His " Even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in Thy sight,' ' 

Other illustrations might be given of the difficulty of 
avoiding misconception when a systematic creed is sought 
to be explained, particularly in its difficult points, by the 
brief interpolation of words and clauses. The method is 
too short. More space is required than can be spared. It 
is better, therefore, to let a carefully constructed and con- 
cisely phrased creed like the "Westminster stand exactly as 
it was drawn up by the sixty-nine commissioners, in the 
five weekly sessions for nearly nine years, and have it ex- 
plained, qualified, and defended in published treatises, in 
sermons, and especially in catechetical lectures. Had the 
ministry been as faithful as it should in years past in 
catechetical instruction, there would be little difficulty in 
understanding the Westminster creed. The remedy need- 
ed is in this direction, not in that of a revision. 

4. Revision is inexpedient, because there is no end to the 
process. It is like the letting out of water. The doctrine 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



85 



of the divine decrees is the particular one selected by the 
Presbytery whose request has brought the subject of revis- 
ion before the General Assembly. But this doctrine runs 
entirely through the Westminster documents, so that if 
changes were made merely in Chapter III. of the Confession, 
this chapter would be wholly out of harmony with the re- 
mainder. Effectual calling, regeneration, perseverance of 
the saints, are all linked in with the divine decree. The 
most cursory perusal will show that a revision of the Con- 
fession on this one subject would amount to an entire re- 
casting of the creed. 

5. Eevision is inexpedient, because it may abridge the 
liberty of interpretation now afforded by the Confession. 
As an example of the variety in explanation admitted by 
the creed as it now stands, take the statement that " God 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the beginning, cre- 
ated or made from nothing the world, and all things there- 
in, in the space of six days." He who holds the patristic 
view that the days of Genesis were periods, and he who 
holds the modern opinion that the days were solar, can 
subscribe to the Westminster statement. But if revised in 
the interest of either view, the subscriber is shut up to it 
alone. Another example is found in the statement respect- 
ing the guilt of Adam's sin. The advocate of natural 
union, or of representative union, or of both in combina- 
tion, can find a foothold, provided only that he holds to the 
penal nature of the first sin. Another instance is the article 
concerning " elect infants." As the tenet was formulated 
by the Assembly, it may mean (a) that all infants dying in 
infancy are elected as a class, some being saved by cove- 
nanted mercy, and some by uncovenanted mercy ; (5) that 
all infants dying in infancy are elected as a class — all alike, 
those within the Church and those outside of it, being 
saved by divine mercy, nothing being said of the covenant ; 



86 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



(<?) that some dying infants are elect, and some non-elect. 
Probably each of these opinions had its representatives in 
the Assembly, and hence the indefinite form of the state- 
ment. The writer regards the first-mentioned view as best 
supported by Scripture and the analogy of faith ; but there 
are many who advocate the second view, and perhaps there 
may be some who hold the third. The liberty of opinion 
now conceded by the Confession on a subject respecting 
which the Scripture data are few, would be ill exchanged 
for a stricter statement that would admit of but one mean- 
ing. 

6. Eevision is inexpedient, because the Westminster Con- 
fession, as it now reads, is a sufficiently broad and liberal 
creed. We do not say that it is sufficiently broad and lib- 
eral for every man and every denomination ; but it is as 
broad and liberal for a Calvinist as any Calvinist should 
desire. For whoever professes Calvinism, professes a pre- 
cise form of doctrine. He expects to keep within definite 
metes and bounds ; he is not one of those religionists who 
start from no premises, and come to no conclusions, and 
hold no tenets. The Presbyterian Church is a Calvinistic 
Church. It will be the beginning of its decline, as it 
already has been of some Calvinistic denominations, when 
it begins to swerve from this dogmatic position. It must 
therefore be distinguished among the Churches for doc- 
trinal consistency, comprehensiveness, and firmness. But 
inside of the metes and bounds established by divine reve- 
lation, and to which it has voluntarily confined itself, it has 
a liberty that is as large as the kingdom of God. It cannot 
get outside of that kingdom, and should not desire to. But 
within it, it is as free to career as a ship in the ocean, as an 
eagle in the air. Yet the ship cannot sail beyond the 
ocean, nor the eagle fly beyond the sky. Liberty within 
the immeasurable bounds and limits of God's truth, is the 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



87 



only true liberty. All else is license. The Westminster 
Confession, exactly as it now reads, has been the creed of 
as free and enlarged intellects as ever lived on earth. The 
substance of it was the strong and fertile root of the two 
freest movements in modern history — that of the Protestant 
Eeformation and that of Republican Government. No 
Presbyterian should complain that the creed of his Church 
is narrow and stifling. 

And here we notice an objection urged against the Con- 
fession relative to the tenet of limited redemption. It is 
said that it is not sufficiently broad and liberal in announc- 
ing the boundless compassion of G-od toward all men indis- 
criminately, and in inviting all men without exception to 
cast themselves upon it. But read and ponder the follow- 
ing statements : 

"Repentance unto life is an evangelical grace, the doctrine whereof 
is to be preached in season and out of season by every minister of the 
Gospel, as well as that of faith in Christ. It is every man's duty to 
endeavor to repent of his particular sins particularly. Every man is 
bound to make private confession of his sins to God, praying for the 
pardon thereof, upon which, and the forsaking of them, he shall find 
mercy. Prayer with thanksgiving being one special part of religious 
worship, is by God required of all men. Prayer is to be made for all 
sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter, but not for the dead. 
God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth, and in se- 
cret each one by himself. God in His Word, by a positive moral Com- 
mandment, binds all men in all ages. The grace of God is manifested 
in the second covenant, in that He freely provideth and offereth to sin. 
ners a Mediator, and life and salvation in Him. The ministry of tLe 
Gospel testifies that whosoever believes in Christ shall be saved, and 
excludes none that will come unto Him. God is able to search the 
heart, hear the requests, pardon the sins, and fulfil the desires of all. " 

These declarations, scattered broadcast through the West- 
minster Confession and Catechisms, teach the universality 
of the Gospel, except no human creature from the offer of 
it, and exclude no human creature from its benefits. Their 



88 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



consistency with the doctrine of election is assumed, but 
not explained, in the Confession of Faith. And no revis- 
ion of this, by the mere interpolation of a few words or 
clauses, will make the subject any clearer or stop all objec- 
tions. 

7. Revision is inexpedient, because the Westminster 
Standards already make full provision for those exceptional 
cases, on account of which revision is claimed by its advo- 
cates to be needed. It is said that there are some true be- 
lievers in the Lord Jesus Christ, who cannot adopt all the 
Westminster statements, who yet should not be, and actually 
are not, excluded from the Presbyterian Church ; that there 
are tender consciences of good men whose scruples are to 
be respected. But these cases are referred by the Form of 
Government to the church Session, and power is given to 
it to receive into membership any person who trusts in the 
blood of Christ for the remission of sin, although his doc- 
trinal knowledge and belief may be unsatisfactory on some 
points. He may stumble at predestination, but if with the 
publican he cries, " God be merciful to me a sinner," he 
has the root of the matter in him and is a regenerate child 
of God. But why should the whole Presbyterian Church 
revise its entire creed so as to make it fit these exceptional 
cases? Why should the mountain go to Mohammed? 
Why should a genuine but deficient evangelical knowledge 
and experience be set up as the type of doctrine for the 
whole denomination? These " babes in Christ" need the 
education of the full and complete system of truth, and 
should gradually be led up to it, instead of bringing the 
system down to their level. There is sometimes a miscon- 
ception at this point. We have seen it stated that the mem- 
bership of the Presbyterian Church is not required or ex- 
pected to hold the same doctrine with the officers ; that the 
pastor, elders, and deacons must accept the Confession of 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



89 



Faith " as containing the system of doctrine taught in the 
Holy Scriptures,'' but that the congregation need not. But 
this error arises from confounding the toleration of a defi- 
ciency with the endorsement of it. Because a church Ses- 
sion tolerates in a particular person who gives evidence of 
faith in Christ an error respecting foreordination, or even 
some abstruse point in the Trinity or the incarnation, it 
does not thereby endorse the error. It does not sanction 
his opinion on these subjects, but only endures it, in view 
of his religious experience on the vital points of faith and 
repentance, and with the hope that his subsequent growth 
in knowledge will bring him to the final rejection of it. 
The Presbyterian Church tolerates theatre-going in some 
of its members — that is to say, it does not discipline them 
for it. But it does not formally approve of and sanction 
theatre-going. A proposition to revise the Confession by 
inserting a clause to this effect, in order to meet the wishes 
and practice of theatre-going church members, would be 
voted down by the Presbyteries. 

The position that the officers of a church may have one 
creed, and the membership another, is untenable. No 
church could live and thrive upon it. A Trinitarian clergy 
preaching to an Arian or Socinian membership, would 
preach to unwilling hearers. And although the difference 
is not so great and so vital, yet a Calvinistic clergy preach- 
ing to an Arminian membership, or an Arminian clergy to 
a Calvinistic membership, would on some points find un- 
sympathetic auditors. Pastor and people, officers and mem- 
bers, must be homogeneous in doctrine, in order to a vigor- 
ous church-life. If, therefore, a certain class of members 
is received into a church, who do not on all points agree 
with the Church creed, this is not to be understood as 
giving the members generally a liberty to depart from the 
Church creed, or to be a reason for revising it. 



90 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



The case is different with the officers of the church. 
There is no exceptional class in this instance. Neither the 
Session nor the Presbytery have any authority to dispense 
with the acceptance of any part of the Confession of Faith, 
when a pastor, elder, or deacon is inducted into office. 
There is no toleration of defective views provided for, when 
those who are to teach and rule the Church are put into the 
ministry. And this for the good reason that ministers and 
elders are expected to be so well indoctrinated, that they 
are " apt to teach " and competent to " rule well." Some 
propose " loose subscription " as a remedy, when candidates 
of lax or unsettled views present themselves for licensure 
and ordination. This is demoralizing, and kills all simplic- 
ity and godly sincerity. Better a thousand times for a 
denomination to alter its creed, than to allow its ministry 
to " palter with words in a double meaning "; than to per- 
mit an Arian subscription to the Nicene Symbol, an Ar- 
minian subscription to the Westminster Confession, a 
Calvinistic subscription to the Articles of Wesley, a Res- 
torationist subscription to the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment. 

For these reasons, it seems to us that the proposed re- 
vision of the Westminster Confession is not wise or ex- 
pedient. The revision of a denominational creed is a rare 
occurrence in ecclesiastical history. Commonly a denomi- 
nation remains from first to last upon the base that was laid 
for it in the beginning by its fathers and founders. And 
when revision does occur, it is seldom in the direction of 
fullness and precision. Usually the alteration is in favor 
of vague and looser statements. Even slight changes are 
apt to be followed by greater ones. The disposition to re- 
vise and alter, needs watching. In an age when the gen- 
eral drift of the unregenerate world is away from the strong 
statements of the Hebrew prophets, of Christ and His in- 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 91 

spired Apostles, it is of the utmost importance that the 
regenerate Church, in all its denominations, should stand 
firm in the old paths, and hold fast to that " Word of God 
which is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to 
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." 

W. Gr. T. Shedd. 



XII. 



DR. VAN DYKE ON PEOF. SHEDD'S LETTER 

Whatever Dr. Shedd writes, is like himself : clear and 
without guile as the cloudless sky. His recent article in 
the Evangelist will be regarded by many as the ablest argu- 
ment hitherto presented on the negative side of the ques- 
tion. Keeping constantly in view his admirable example 
of candor and courtesy, I propose to review his seven rea- 
sons against the expediency of revising the Confession of 
Faith. 

1. " In its existing form the Confession has well met all 

the needs of the Church for the past two centuries 

All the past victories and successes of Presbyterianism 
have been accomplished under it. Success in the past, is 
the guarantee for success in the future." To which we 
answer : (1) not every sequence is a consequence ; (2) the 
exclusive connection between the Confession of Faith, es- 
pecially those portions of the Confession which it is pro- 
posed to amend, and the past success of the Presbyterian 
Church, is not very apparent. It is quite possible that the 
greater part of this success may be due to other causes. 
The Methodist Church has grown faster than we have. So 
of late years has the Episcopal Church. Are these results 
attributable to their rejection of our Confession ? (3). Suc- 
cess in the past is not the guarantee for success in the 
future, except so far as the future shall imitate the past in 
adapting itself to changed conditions. The Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland had wonderful success for a century 
(92) 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISIOJST. 



93 



under her old Confession. She swept Popery out of the 
land, and set up the Reformed faith. Yet she did not 
hesitate to lay aside the old, and adopt the Westminster 
Confession. The Presbyterian Church in this country suc- 
ceeded well for a hundred years, before she adopted the 
Westminster Standards, and did not hesitate to revise them, 
in order to make that adoption possible. The question now 
before us, is whether another revision has not become 
necessary, in order to adapt the Confession to the present 
condition and wants of the Church. To settle this ques- 
tion upon the principle of letting well enough alone, is not 
true conservatism, but a blind worshipping of the past, with 
which our fathers seem to have had no sympathy. 

2. " The Reunion of the two divisions of the Church 

was founded on the Confession as it now stands It 

is to be feared that if a revision should take place, there 
will be a dissatisfied portion of the Church who would pre- 
fer to remain upon the historic foundation." (1). There 
is reason to fear that if revision does not take place, there 
will be a still larger dissatisfied portion of the Church, and 
thus while we avoid Scylla, we may run into Charybdis, by 
keeping the helm down too hard. (2). The revision now 
proposed is no more radical, and will no more change the 
foundations, than the revisions already accomplished since 
the Reunion. The Book of Discipline and the Form of 
Government are just as historic as the Confession is. (3). 
There is no indication that the revision now proposed will 
open the old controversies between the Old and New 
Schools, which were happily closed by the Reunion. That 
Reunion was based not on "the Confession as it now 
stands" but upon the Standards as they then were, and in- 
cluded no pledge that these Standards should never be altered. 
The Standards themselves provide for their own amend- 
ment; and they have deen largely amended since the Reunion. 



94 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



3 and 4. Dr. Shedd's third and fourth reasons against re- 
vision, are but two phases of the same argument. In the 
first he says it " will introduce new difficulties : the explana- 
tions will need to be explained." In the second he says 
" Revision is inexpedient, because there is no end to the 
process; it is like the letting out of water." (1). Very 
well, we admit that there is no end to the process. And so 
long as the Bible is our supreme standard, to which all hu- 
man Confessions are subordinate, and so long as men differ 
in the interpretation of Scripture, there can be no end to the 
process. It is in that very process that the life of the 
Church largely consists, under the perpetual guidance of 
God's providence and Spirit. If it were otherwise, there 
would be no need of Confessions at all, nor even of theolog- 
ical seminaries and teachers of divinity. (2). But if Dr. 
Shedd means that there is at this time any special risk in 
revising our creed beyond what existed, for example, in the 
days of the Westminster Assembly ; if he means that the 
Presbyterian Church of to-day cannot be trusted to revise 
her own creed, lest she should break more than she mends, 
I must beg leave to differ with him entirely. That illustra- 
tion of the letting out of water, is a good one ; but to my 
mind, it bears a warning exactly opposite from what it sug- 
gests to Dr. Shedd. It is better to let the water run in 
legitimate channels. If we keep the flood-gates screwed 
down just where the Westminster Assembly left them, the 
flood-tides of thought, of zeal, and of missionary spirit — in 
regard to which the Church in our day will suffer nothing 
by comparison with the Church of two hundred and fifty 
years ago — may make a way for themselves more sweeping 
and destructive than any revision under our constitutional 
restrictions can possibly be. (3). There never has been, 
and I do not believe there ever will be, a better time for 
such a revision than the present. The gates of the Ecclesi- 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



95 



astical Janus are shut. The spirit of peace and the longing 
for unity are not hindrances, but helps. It would be easy 
to show that the providential preparation and the divine 
guidance which have been so largely claimed for the West- 
minster Assembly, belong as fully and as manifestly to us 
as to them. 

5. u Kevision is inexpedient, because it may abridge the 
liberty of interpretation now afforded by the Confession." 
In this quotation I have italicised the word may, for that 
is the point of the whole objection. Dr. Shedd does not 
affirm that it will abridge the liberty of interpretation, but he 
gives a timely warning when he says that it may. Yery well ; 
let us heed the warning, and see to it that if the revision 
takes place, it does not restrict the right of private judgment 
which is now freely exercised by us all. I cannot see any 
danger of such a result in any of the amendments hitherto 
proposed. (1). In regard to the six days of creation, some 
may have objected to the Confession, under the misappre- 
hension that it interprets the days to mean periods of twen- 
ty-four hours ; but when it is understood that the Confession 
(the Catechisms also) simply transfers without expounding 
the language of Scripture, no advocate of revision will be in 
favor of amending it at this point. (2). As to " elect in- 
fants," while for one I would prefer to change the phrase 
to " all infants," and cannot see that it would narrow the 
Confession to put into it what the whole Presbyterian 
Church believes, yet the advocates of revision would be sat- 
isfied to omit all reference to infants as a special class, and 
let the section read, "All elect persons who are incapable of 
being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word, are 
saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, 
where, and how He pleaseth " (Chap. X., Sec. 3). What 
restriction of liberty would be involved in this amendment ? 
The advantages gained by getting rid of the strife-produc- 



96 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISIOK. 



ing ambiguity, " elect infants dying in infancy," are obvious, 
and need not be repeated. 

6. " The Confession as it now reads is a sufficiently broad 
and liberal creed; .... it is as broad and liberal for a 
Calvinist as any Calvinist should desire." 

Without any discussion of what is meant by broad and 
liberal in this connection, I beg leave to say that I am 
a Calvinist, thoroughly agreeing with Dr. Shedd in all that 
he says about the importance of a definite creed within the 
limits of God's truth, and claiming as he does to be as free 
within those limits as " a ship on the ocean, or an eagle in 
the air." But for these very reasons I am in favor of re- 
vising the Confession, and amending some of its statements. 
So far as it applies to me, Dr. Shedd is mistaken when he 
says " an objection is urged against the Confession relative 
to the tenet of limited redemption." Here again I will 
not dispute about words. But I believe that redemption 
used as a comprehensive term for the ultimate results of 
Christ's mediation in behalf of men, is limited in fact to 
those who, to use Paul's expression, receive the atonement. 
But I believe also that God's love to men, which prompted 
the gift of His Son to the world, is unlimited, except by 
the bounds of the human race, that Christ offered a sacrifice 
and satisfaction to divine justice for the sins of the whole 
world ; and that the salvation revealed to us in the Gospel 
is sufficient for all, adapted to all, and offered to all, so that 
" no man is lost for the want of an atonement, or because 
there is any other barrier in the way of his salvation than 
his own most free and wicked will" (Dr. A. A. Hodge, 
" Outlines of Theology," p. 420). These statements are 
abundantly warranted by Scripture. And in regard to 
them we affirm that our Confession of Faith is sadly de- 
ficient as a summary of Scripture doctrine. Dr. Shedd has 
sincerely and ably endeavored to prove the contrary. But 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



97 



even he has failed ; and what can the man do that cometh 
after the King ? Not one of the fragments he has skilfully 
woven together out of the Confession, nor all of them com- 
bined, can be accepted as a declaration of God's infinite 
love for all men, and of the infinite sufficiency and universal 
offer of the Gospel. They were not intended, as their con- 
nection shows, to teach any such doctrine, and they do not 
teach it. But even if they could be logically construed 
into such a conclusion, a truth so clearly taught in Scrip- 
ture, and so vital in its connection with the missionary zeal 
and preaching of the Church, ought not to be left for theo- 
logians to deduce out of the Confession ; it ought to be 
emblazoned on her Standards so clearly that he who runs 
may read it. 

7. Under his seventh reason, Dr. Shedd inadvertently 
puts the advocates of revision in a position they are not 
willing to occupy. He says, "Revision is inexpedient, 
because the Westminster Standards already make full pro- 
vision for those exceptional cases on account of which re- 
vision is claimed by its advocates to be needed." No one 
has asked for revision on account of any exceptional cases. 
The pleading for exceptional cases is all on the other side — 
in behalf of some who may hold the supralapsarian theory 
of God's eternal decree, or the possible damnation of some 
" infants dying in infancy." Thank God these are excep- 
tional cases ! When we advocate such an amendment of 
the third chapter of the Confession as will purge it from 
all suspicion of teaching that God creates men on purpose 
to damn them, and such an amendment of the tenth chap- 
ter as will take away all pretext for the charge that we be- 
lieve some dying infants are not elect, and such an addition 
to the whole Confession as will make it clearly declare 
God's infinite love and willingness for the salvation of all 
men — we are seeking not to provide for exceptional cases, 



98 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



but to bring our Standards into more perfect harmony, with 
the Scriptures, and with the faith of the Presbyterian 
Church. We are trying to be patient under the charge of 
seeking to make the Confession more narrow and exclusive ; 
but we feel its injustice, nevertheless. 

With much that Dr. Shedd says about the danger of our 
liberty in subscription to the Standards running into license, 
I am in hearty agreement. Because this danger is clearly 
perceived, and because some of our opponents advocate a 
greater liberty of subscription as the practical and necessary 
alternative of revision, therefore we are the more earnest in 
advocating the amendment of the Confession. We see the 
dangers on both sides. But on the one side they are ob- 
vious and easily avoided, because they are foreseen and 
provided for by the constitutional process, through which 
any revision must be accomplished. Every proposed amend- 
ment must be definitely formulated, openly discussed, and 
submitted to the vote of the whole Church as represented in 
the Presbyteries. On the other side, the dangers to which 
Dr. Shedd refers, are an indefinite force, working m secret, 
undermining the foundations, and revealing themselves 
after the mischief has been wrought. How far these dan- 
gers are real and operative at the present time, it is not 
competent for me to judge. But it is proper to add, that 
I do not believe there is any wide-spread defection in our 
Church from the system of doctrine taught in our Con- 
fession. The Presbyterian Church, as represented in our 
Assembly, was never more sound in the faith, nor more loyal 
in adhering to her Standards, than she is to-day. I do not 
know of a minister or elder whom there is reason to sus- 
pect of dishonesty in professing sincerely to receive and 
adopt the Confession. At the same time, and in perfect 
consistency with this loyalty, there is a wide-spread de- 
mand for the amendment of some of the doctrinal state- 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



99 



ments of our creed. This demand is spontaneous, .and can- 
not be suppressed. Our missionary zeal, our love for, and 
sympathy with, the holy catholic Church, of which God's 
Spirit is the everlasting endowment, and all that is best in 
the spirit of our times, lies back of it, and urges it forward. 
The revision will come, sooner or later, as sure as the sun- 
rise. Now, it seems to me, is the time to make it with 
safety. It is better to lift the constitutional flood-gates and 
let the water run, than to dam it up, and run the risk of 
a future inundation. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



XIII. 



FURTHER . EEMAEKS BY PROF. SHEDD. 

My article upon revision, to my surprise, has elicited 
several elaborate and able replies from well-known and in- 
fluential Presbyterians, that call for some answer. I do 
not propose to notice in detail all the arguments of my 
respected friends, Yan Dyke, Nelson, and Day, who have 
honored my views with their objections. I should have to 
write a volume in order to this. My belief is, that a 
sufficient reply to all of their fault-finding with the Con- 
fession as it now stands, may be found in any good Calvin- 
istic treatise in theology. To every one of their objections 
respecting the Westminster statement of the doctrine of 
decrees, I would undertake to furnish a conclusive answer 
from, the "Systematic Theology" of my honored prede- 
cessor, Dr. H. B. Smith (see pp. 114-140). Here is one 
difficulty in the case. The discussion of the abstruse sub- 
ject of decrees has to be carried on in an article of a half 
column, or column, of a newspaper. An objection can be 
stated in a few lines, but the reply cannot be so given. A 
misconception can be presented in a paragraph, but the 
correction of it requires a column or a broadside. Leaving, 
then, the great bulk of the objections urged by my friends 
against the Westminster Standards to be answered by their 
systematic expounders and defenders, I wish to fortify my 
general position by two additional remarks. 

1. In the first place, my contention is, that the Confes- 
(100) 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



101 



sion does not need revision, because there are no such errors 
in it as are alleged by my critics. I do not assert that the 
Confession is either inspired or infallible, or that the 
Church has no right to revise it. But I do assert that there 
is no such error in the statement of the doctrine of decrees 
as is affirmed by the advocates of revision. 

With much that Dr. Yan Dyke says, I heartily agree. 
If all the advocates of revision were as sound theologians as 
he is, there would be less hazard in the attempt to revise. 
But I utterly disagree with him when he asserts that the 
Confession needs (a) " such an amendment as will purge it 
from all suspicion of teaching that God creates men on pur- 
pose to damn them," and (b) " such an addition as will 
make it clearly declare God's infinite love and willingness 
for the salvation of all men." 

Respecting the first assertion, I deny that there is any 
phrase or clause in the Confession which, when fairly in- 
terpreted by its context and other parts of the Standards, 
justifies this suspicion. I cannot, of course, in this short 
article, cite and examine all the passages in proof. I can 
only say, without fear of contradiction, that I am supported 
in this denial by all the expounders and defenders of the 
Westminster Standards. I do not know of one who as- 
serts that the phraseology concerning decrees even sug- 
gests, much less warrants, the sentiment that " God creates 
men on purpose to damn them." Will Dr. Yan Dyke say 
that his revered theological instructor, Dr. Charles Hodge, 
would have conceded for an instant that there is any ground 
for this charge in the Westminster statement concerning 
reprobation ? And does he not believe that Charles Hodge 
correctly understood the phraseology of the Confession ? 

Respecting the second assertion, that there is no " clear 
declaration " in the Westminster Standards " of God's in- 
finite love and willingness that all men should be saved," I 



102 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



have already quoted a series of passages from them which 
Dr. Yan Dyke says " were not intended, as their connection 
shows, to teach any such doctrine, and do not teach it," but 
which have been universally regarded, both by systematic 
theologians and practical preachers, as plain and explicit 
proof of the doctrine of the infinite sufficiency of Christ's 
atonement, the infinite compassion of God, and the uni- 
versal offer of the Gospel. If they do not prove this, 
what do they prove ? They certainly do not teach that 
God feels compassion for only the elect. 

It seems to me that these two assertions of Dr. Yan 
Dyke contain implications that would carry him a great 
deal further than he would be willing to go. It seems to 
me that in representing the Confession to be positively de- 
fective and erroneous on two such very important points as 
these, not to speak of others which he mentions, he is giv- 
ing aid and comfort to the enemy. He is virtually telling 
the opponents of Calvinism that they are correct in their 
aspersions on the Westminster symbol ; in their assertion 
that it is a hard and repellant system. He is saying to the 
world, that for two centuries the Presbyterian ministry, in 
teaching the creed which they have subscribed, have been 
teaching, by implication at least, that God creates men on 
purpose to damn them, and have not clearly taught that 
God feels infinite compassion for the souls of men, and 
sincerely desires their salvation, and that now it is time 
to stop such teaching. The Presbyterian creed, he con- 
tends, has been wrong on these two points, and now it 
should be set right. Will the Presbyteries take this view 
of the subject ? Will they put this brand of reproach on 
their predecessors ? 

I have the same difficulty with the similar allegation of 
error in the Confession made by my friend Mr. Day. I 
suppose that I do him no injustice in classing him with the 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



103 



Liberals, and of this class he says : " The issue in their 
minds is this, viz. : the Confession of Faith in some of its 
statements is wrong. There is error in it, and the error is 
vital" He then charges upon the Confession an error 
which, with all due respect, it does not contain. He states 
what he understands the doctrine of the Confession to be, 
in the following words : " According to this doctrine, if 
God's decrees to everlasting death were unconditioned and 
without reference to sin, but for His own glory, then if 
man had not fallen, still the non-elect would have existed, 
and would have gone to their final doom of everlasting 
death, and that without sin. If this be the doctrine of the 
Confession, I feel bound to say that I do not believe it, but 
abhor it." He then adds : "It seems to me that sections 
2, 3, 4, and 7, of Chapter III. of the Confession lead to 
this enormity and absurdity." 

Now I acknowledge that if this is a correct statement of 
what the Westminster Confession teaches concerning God's 
decree of reprobation, I should be as strongly in favor of 
its revision as any one. I have been a professor in Union 
Seminary twenty-six years, and once in every five years the 
Board of Directors, who themselves subscribe to the Con- 
fession, and of whom no one is more respected and influen- 
tial than Mr. Day, have summoned me before them, and in 
accordance with the constitution, have required me to affirm, 
kt in the presence of God and of the Directors of the Semi- 
nary," that I " solemnly and sincerely receive and adopt 
the Westminster Confession of Faith as containing the 
system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures." But 
had I supposed at any time during all these years, that I 
was required to subscribe to such a creed as Mr. Day repre- 
sents the Westminster to be upon the subject of decrees, I 
should have refused subscription and tendered my resigna- 
tion. But the Confession, instead of teaching that God's 



104 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



decrees of election and reprobation were made " without 
reference to sin," and that " if man had not fallen, still the 
non-elect would have existed and would have gone down 
to their final doom of everlasting death, and that without 
sin," distinctly postulates and supposes the existence of sin, 
as the moral state and condition out of which some men 
are elected, and in which some men are left and reprobated. 
" They who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are re- 
deemed by Christ. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, 
according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, 
whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He 
pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His 
creatures, to pass by, and ordain them to dishonor and 
wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice " 
(Confession III. 6, 7). How is it possible, in the face of 
these statements, to say that the Confession teaches that 
" if man had not fallen, still the non-elect would have ex- 
isted, and would have gone down to everlasting death, and 
that without sin " ? The Westminster Confession, like the 
Dort Canons, is infralapsarian. In the order of nature, it 
places the decrees of election and reprobation after the 
apostasy of Adam and his posterity. It presupposes that 
all men are guilty and lost sinners by this event, having 
no claim upon the mercy of God. Then God decides to 
overcome the sin of the major part of them, by "the 
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost," 
and the minor portion, He decides to leave to their own 
free will and self-determination in sin. He leaves these 
sinners severely alone, to do just as they please ; to " eat of 
the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own 
devices." The former decision is election ; the latter is rep- 
robation. The Confession takes the ground that God is 
not under obligation to save any sinner whatever, and that 
He consequently has the right of a sovereign ruler to de- 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



105 



termine how many criminals He will pardon, and how 
many sinners He will save. If this is not the way in 
which the Confession teaches the doctrines of election and 
reprobation, I will submit to correction. 

2. In the second place, my contention is that there has 
been no such change in the doctrinal views of the great 
majority of Presbyterians, as is asserted by some of the ad- 
vocates of revision, and assigned as the reason for it. Dr. 
Yan Dyke is not one of this class. He says that " the Pres- 
byterian Church, as represented in our Assembly, was never 
more sound in the faith, nor more loyal in adhering to her 
Standards, than she is to-day." This is also my belief. But 
I draw a different conclusion from this state of things from 
his. As there has been no alteration in doctrinal views, I 
see no need of altering the creed. If there really is the 
very same state of religious opinion in the Church of to- 
day, that existed in 1870, 1837, and 1789, there will be 
the same satisfaction with the Confession now as then. No 
revision was demanded at those epochs, and none will be 
demanded now. 

But a very common and a very passionate argument that 
I have seen in some newspapers, both secular and religious, 
is that the Presbyterian Church is dissatisfied with the 
Confession ; that its congregations will not endure the 
preaching of its distinguishing tenets, and that its ministers 
have ceased to preach them — in brief, that the progress of 
civilization and physical science has antiquated the doc- 
trines of the fathers, and that all creeds must be revised, 
and all churches adjusted to the spirit of the age. This is 
not the sentiment or the argument of my honored friend, 
but if revision is entered upon, he will not find everybody 
so moderate as himself. He thinks that the true way when 
the flood rises, is to " let the water run in legitimate chan- 
nels." It seems to me that the better way is to strengthen 



106 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



the dam, and keep it strong. To cut a hole in the dam, or 
to let the water cut it, does the mischief. 

A writer in The Interior, who is quoted in the Evangel- 
ist, strangely says that my " argument presupposes that the 
Church is, or may possibly now be, (sic) dissatisfied with 
some of the statements of the Confession." My argument 
presupposes the exact contrary. I oppose revision on the 
ground that the present generation of Presbyterians has 
the very same religious experience that their fathers had, 
and finds a satisfactory expression of it in the very same 
Confession and Catechisms. If I supposed that the great 
majority of the Presbyterian Church is dissatisfied with 
their Standards, believing that they teach or countenance 
errors of doctrine, I would advise revision ; not because I 
think that there are errors, and that the revision would be 
an improvement, but because I would have a church honest 
and frank in saying what it believes. 

And here the whole matter hinges. If there has been a 
i change in doctrinal sentiment in the majority of the Pres- 
byterian Church, the Confession will be changed, and ought 
to be. But if there has not been, it will not be changed, 
and ought not to be. The majority must rule. As Mr. 
Day says, " We are trying to find out, by asking for revis- 
ion, which class is the mountain, and which is Moham- 
med." For this reason, the coming vote of the Presbyte- 
ries will prove to be one of the gravest and most far-reach- 
ing in its consequences, of any that have ever been passed 
in the history of the Church. It will determine how far, or 
how little, the Church has drifted from the old anchorage. 

W. G. T. Shedd. 



XIV. 



DK. VAN DYKE IK EEPLY TO PKOF. SHEDD. 

From the beginning of this discussion there has been, on 
the part of some who resist revision, an ill-concealed dis- 
paragement of their opponents. It grieves me to see my 
venerated friend, Dr. Shedd, falling into their way of speak- 
ing. It is true, indeed, that no man has a better right than 
he to speak ex cathedra, and sweeping judgments come 
with a better grace from him than from some smaller men. 
But for this very reason they are the more to be regretted. 
The following sentence occurs in the introduction to his 
" Further Eemarks upon Bevision," published in the Evan- 
gelist of Oct. 10th : " My belief is that a sufficient reply to 
all their fault-finding with the Confession as it now stands, 
may be found in any good Calvinistic treatise in theology." 
As I read this sentence, my heart said, That is not like Dr. 
Shedd ; it is the position, rather than the man, that speaks it. 
Is it like the broad-minded scholar and courteous gentleman, 
to characterize all that has been written by the advocates 
of revision as "fault-finding with the Confession," and 
to intimate that the writers are either ignorant of any good 
Calvinistic treatise, or unable to comprehend its contents ? 
There is a fair collection of such treatises in my library. 
The last addition to it is Dr. Shedd's " Dogmatic Theology," 
which I have read and pondered from beginning to end. 
But so far from curing, it has increased my desire for the 
revision of the Confession. What has failed to cure me of 

(107) 



108 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



this " fault-finding, 1 ' is not likely to prove a panacea for the 
other advocates of revision. Are such men as Dr. Schaff 
and Dr. McCosh and Dr. Herriek Johnson unacquainted 
with the contents of Calvinistic treatises, or incapable of 
understanding their bearing upon the Confession of Faith ? 
Are the Presbyterian Church of England, and the United 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and the great majority of 
the Free Church of Scotland, a set of ignorant fault-finders, 
for whose unrest the best prescription is a saturated solution 
of some good treatise on Calvinistic theology ? The advo- 
cates of revision might retort upon their judges, by saying 
that the best remedy for this iron-clad conservatism of hu- 
man and uninspired words, would be to lay aside all treatises 
on theology, all sectarian names and traditional prejudices, 
and to come back with unbiassed minds to the study of 
God's Word. But dogmatism and assumptions of superior- 
ity on either side, are out of place in such a discussion as 
this. 

Let us all dismount from the high horse, and meet each 
other on equal footing. This is said not so much with ref- 
erence to Dr. Shedd as to some smaller men, who are likely 
to be confirmed in their assumptions of exclusive orthodoxy 
by his unguarded words, the full force of which I am per- 
suaded he did not consider. 

The "two additional remarks" with which Dr. Shedd 
"fortifies his general position," really cover the whole 
ground of the discussion. 

I. He affirms that " there are no such errors " in the 
Confession as the advocates of revision allege. We affirm 
that there are such errors ; and so we stand face to face. 
The issue thus joined is to be tried before the whole Pres- 
byterian Church, and whatever may be the formal decision 
on the Assembly's overture, in the wholesome discussion it 
has awakened, the revision is being made in the hearts and 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



109 



minds of intelligent readers. Such readers will not forget 
that the errors we desire to correct are not in the system of 
doctrine, nor in any doctrine of the system, but simply in 
statements which can easily be amended without in anywise 
affecting the integrity of the Confession. My venerated 
friend quotes me correctly as desiring "such an amend- 
ment of the Confession as will purge it from all suspicion 
of teaching that God creates men on purpose to damn them, 
and such an addition as will make it clearly declare God's 
infinite love and willingness for the salvation of all men." 
We do not differ in this discussion upon any question of 
theology. It is delightful to observe how entirely we agree 
as to what the Confession ought to teach. We differ only 
on the question of fact as to what the Confession does teach. 
He denies, and I affirm, that there is need of amendment 
upon the two points above recited. If I stood alone in this 
position, it would be all right to brush me aside, and set me 
to studying some good Calvinistic treatise. But inasmuch 
as such ministers as Dr. McCosh, Dr. Schaff, Dr. Nelson, 
and Dr. Johnson, and such elders as Henry Day, and a 
multitude like him whom I could name — and the whole 
Presbyterian Church of England, and the great majority of 
the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, stand in the same 
position on this question of fact — would it not be charitable 
and wise for such a man as Dr. Shedd to say, " Yery well, 
brethren ; I think the Confession ought to teach what you 
demand, and I believe that it does so teach ; but inasmuch 
as you cannot see with my eyes, I am willing that these 
human and fallible words should be so amended as to make 
their meaning plainer " % How does Dr. Shedd prove that 
there is no need to purge the Confession from the suspicion of 
teaching the supralapsarian dogma that God creates men on 
purpose to damn them ? I submit to his own candid judg- 
ment that his argument concedes all that I have asserted. 



110 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



He says: "I deny that there is any phrase or clause 
which, when fairly interpreted by its context and other 
farts of the Standards, justifies this suspicion " — that is 
to say, he reads into the third section of the third chapter 
the explanations of its bald statement which are found in 
other parts of the Standards. The advocates of revision 
propose to put into it, as a permanent addition and ex- 
planation, just what Dr. Shedd and other theologians read 
into it; so that the unlearned reader may not misunder- 
stand it, and the opponents of our system of doctrine may 
not quote it to our disadvantage. As it now stands, not 
merely as a phrase or clause, but as a complete section, it 
teaches that God foreordains men to eternal death simply 
for His own glory, without regard to their character or de- 
serts. This I do not believe. If I understand him, Dr. 
Shedd does not believe it. It is horrible! If in saying 
this I give " aid and comfort to the enemy," let it be so. 
Truth is better than party victory. ~No man who believes 
in Christ is my enemy, even though he be an Arminian. 
He is my friend, and I desire to make my doctrine as plain 
and as agreeable to him as truth will allow. I agree with 
all Arminians, and with all Christians, that God foreordains 
men to eternal death for their sins; that it would not be 
for His glory, but for His dishonor, to do otherwise ; and 
I want to put that little phrase, for their sins, into the sec- 
tion referred to, so that there may be no occasion to defend 
it or even to explain it by other parts of our Standards. 

In reply to the question whether my " revered theologi- 
cal instructor, Dr. Charles Hodge, would have conceded for 
an instant that there is any ground for this charge in the 
"Westminster statement concerning reprobation," I answer 
in Dr. Hodge's own words : " The symbols of the West- 
minster Assembly, while they clearly imply the infralap- 
sarian view, were yet so framed as to avoid offence to those 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



Ill 



who adopted the supralapsarian theory" ("Theology," 
vol. ii., p. 319). The essence of the supralapsarian the- 
ory, which Dr. Hodge utterly rejected and condemned, is 
fairly expressed in the popular phrase that God creates 
men on purpose to damn them. The third section of the 
third chapter of the Confession was so framed as not to of- 
fend those who held the supralapsarian theory. It is one 
of the sops that were thrown to that Cerberus. Whether 
Dr. Hodge, if he were now living, would be in favor of 
amending that section, so as to bring it more into conform- 
ity with the rest of the Standards and with his own teach- 
ing, it is not competent for me to say. But if he were 
here, and opposed to the revision, with all my love and 
reverence I should be opposed to him, just as I am opposed 
to Dr. Shedd. This question is not to be settled by the 
authority of great names. The fact that the Confession 
has been accepted and defended by so many great and 
good men, is no proof that it cannot be, nor that it ought 
not to be, amended. That argument, if it should prevail, 
would dam up the stream of Scripture interpretation and 
cause it to " sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and 
tradition." 

In regard to the other amendment, viz. : " Such an addi- 
tion to the Confession as will make it clearly declare God's 
infinite love and willingness for the salvation of all men," 
Dr. Shedd and I again stand face to face, not on a ques- 
tion of theology, but of fact. I deny that the Confession 
contains any such declaration ; he affirms that it does. But 
I cannot see it, even with the aid of his elaborate demon- 
strations. If I were alone in this, I would willingly con- 
clude that the failure to see it is due to my own blindness. 
But there are multitudes in the same position. Would it 
not be a charitable and wise concession on the part of Dr. 
Shedd and those who agree with him to consent to the in- 



112 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



sertion into the Confession of one, clear, comprehensive, 
and explicit statement of what he says is already there in 
broken lights and scattered fragments ? 

II. In the second remark by which Dr. Shedd fortifies 
his general position, he affirms that " there has been no such 
change in the doctrinal views of the great majority of Pres- 
byterians, as is asserted by some of the advocates of revis- 
ion, and assigned as a reason for it." He adds : " Dr. Yan 
Dyke does not belong to this class." This was evidently 
designed to do justice to my position, for which I thank 
him. But whether the exception thus made in my favor 
can be accepted, will depend upon the meaning of doc- 
trinal views. Dr. Shedd doubtless means that there has 
been no such change in the faith of the Church in all or 
any of the doctrines which constitute the system taught in 
our Confession, as to require or warrant a change in any 
doctrine essential to that system. In this I entirely agree. 
And I am glad that Dr. Shedd agrees with me in the belief 
that our Church as a whole was never more loyal to the 
essential doctrines of oar Confession than she is to-day. I 
do not know of any one who advocates revision upon the 
ground that its doctrines ought to be changed, though there 
are some who oppose revision, because they desire to be re- 
leased entirely from subscription to those doctrines. But 
" doctrinal views " is a very broad, not to say ambiguous, 
term. It includes methods of interpreting the Confession, 
theories outside of Confessional limits, and opinions con- 
cerning the adequacy and correctness of certain doctrinal 
statements in the Confession itself. In these respects there 
has been a very great change in the doctrinal views of the 
great majority of Presbyterians, — such a change as now 
warrants, and will ultimately compel, a revision of the 
Confession. 

(1). The supralapsarian theory, whose advocates the West- 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



113 



minster Confession was so framed as not to offend, the same 
theory which went to seed in the Emmonsism and Hopkins- 
ianism of New England — the theory whose essence is that 
God creates men in order to damn them for His glory, and 
whose legitimate conclusion is that we mnst be willing to 
be damned before we can be saved — has passed away from 
the Presbyterian Church, where it never had mnch enter- 
tainment, and, thank God, it is no longer even a ghost to 
frighten children. As this theory is dead, whatever was 
put into our Confession to conciliate its advocates, ought to 
be carried out and buried with it. 

(2). There has been a change amounting to a revolution 
in the views of Calvinists, and especially of Presbyterians, 
in regard to the salvation of dying infants. I will not re- 
peat the history of opinion on this subject, so admirably 
set forth by Dr. Prentiss in the Presbyterian Review, and 
by Dr. Briggs in his recent book called " Whither "; nor 
restate the argument of Dr. Hodge and others for the sal- 
vation of all dying infants ; nor review the explanations by 
which it is attempted to reconcile the phrase, "elect in- 
fants," with the present faith of the Church. To illustrate 
the extent of the change in doctrinal views at this point, I 
will quote two passages. The first is from Dr. Twisse, the 
moderator of the Westminster Assembly, in a book entitled 
" The Eiches of God's Love unto the Vessels of Mercy." 
He says : " If many thousands, even all the infants of 
Turks and Saracens, dying in original sin, are tormented 
by Him (God) in Hell fire, is He to be counted the father 
of cruelties for that ? " [Quoted by Dr. Briggs in 
"Whither," p. 125. There is a more horrible passage 
quoted on page 124, from Samuel Kutherford, one of the 
Scotch Commissioners in the Westminster Assembly.] The 
other passage to which we gladly turn is from Dr. A. A. 
Hodge : " In the history of the world, since Adam, all the 



114 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



souls of those that have died before birth or between birth 
and moral agency have been redeemed in Christ. Through 
all the ages, — from Japan, from China, from India, from 
Africa, from the islands of the sea, — multitudes, flocking 
like birds, have gone to heaven of this great company of 
redeemed infants of the Church of God." The change in- 
dicated by these two extracts is immense. If there were 
no other, it would warrant and ultimately compel a revision 
of the Confession. ' Dr. Shedd and others think there is 
not going to be much of a shower, but we tell him the 
windows of heaven are opened. He proposes to " strengthen 
the dam " by insisting that it is all right, and letting it se- 
verely alone. We propose to strengthen it, not as he says, 
" by cutting a hole," but by lifting the constitutional flood- 
gates to take off the pressure, while we take out some rot- 
ten planks like " elect infants " and put in some sound Gos- 
pel timber in the form of a declaration of God's infinite 
love for all men. If our opponents are afraid that this will 
not be well done, the best course is for them to join the 
movement and help us to keep it within conservative 
limits 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



XV. 



A NOTE FEOM DR. SHEDD. 

To the Editor of the New York Evangelist: 

Will you grant me the space to disclaim the interpreta- 
tion which Dr. Yan Dyke puts upon my use of the phrase 
"fault-finding with the Confession." I employed it in no 
discourteous sense, but to express what seems to me the 
simple fact in the case. Dr. Yan Dyke contends that the 
Confession does not proclaim the love of God towards all 
men. This, if true, is a fault in it. He contends that it 
teaches by implication that God creates some men in order 
to damn them. This, if true, is a fault. 

I do not think that my phraseology warrants his assertion 
that I " intimate " that " he is ignorant of any good Calvin- 
istic treatise, or unable to comprehend its contents." My 
repeated expressions of respect for his theological learning 
and orthodoxy, should have precluded such a charge as this. 
All I wish to say, and all that I do say, is that these alleged 
faults in the Confession are noticed by systematic expounders 
of it, who deny that they are there, and give their proof. 
I mentioned this fact, merely to indicate what is the com- 
mon understanding of the Confession by this class of per- 
sons, not quoting them at all as having ex cathedra author- 
ity in the matter. I expressly say that my limits forbid the 
examination of passages in proof, and hence I adopt this 
short method of citing the theologians in regard to the 
meaning of the Confession, as a lawyer would cite the ex- 
positions of jurists like Kent and Story, as to the meaning 
of the Constitution. 

Yours truly, W. G. T. Shedd. 

(115) 



XVI. 



GOD'S INFINITE LOYE TO MEN. 

God's clearest and most permanent revelation of Him- 
self is in the person and life of Jesus Christ, God of God, 
Light of Light, very God of very God. The incarnate 
Word is infinitely above the written "Word, which derives 
its chief value from the fact that it testifies of Him. And 
therefore the portions of Scripture which record Christ's 
life and teaching are pre-eminently called the Gospels. 

In the teaching of Christ two truths stand side by side 
as clear as the sun ; and whether we can demonstrate their 
consistency or not we are bound to believe, to defend, and 
to proclaim both of them. 

The first is God's sovereignty in the bestowal of grace 
upon sinners. He does what He pleases with His own. 
" I thank Thee, O Father, God of heaven and earth, be- 
cause Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent 
and revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in Thy sight." Quotations could easily be 
multiplied on this point, but this one is enough. 

The second truth, revealed not only in the word of Christ, 
but in actions speaking louder than words, is GooVs love for 
all men, and His compassionate regard even for those who 
perish in their sins. " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father," is one of those sayings of His which penetrate the 
depths of God's unsearchable judgment, and without ex- 
plaining them to our comprehension nevertheless leave 
them luminous forever. What Christ is, God is ; what 
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CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



117 



Christ does, God does; what Christ says, God says. If 
there is anything in our theology which contravenes this 
foundation truth it must be wrong. 

Now see Christ as He laments and weeps over reprobate 
Jerusalem. They whose house was left unto them desolate, 
and from whose eyes the things that belonged to their peace 
were hidden, were certainly non-elect. They were not 
chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, nor 
predestinated to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus 
Christ. And yet the only Redeemer of God's elect laments 
and weeps over them. It was not merely the man Jesus, 
but God manifest in the flesh who did and said these things. 
We see the Father in Him standing on Mount Olivet and 
saying, " O J erusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have 
gathered you and ye would not." Examples might be 
multiplied on this point, but this one will sufiice. 

These two truths, God's sovereignty in the bestowal of 
His grace, and His infinite love for all men, are the hinges 
and turning-points of all Christian theology. The anti- 
Calvinist denies the first. The A^p^-Calvinist or supra- 
lapsarian denies the second, holding that God creates some 
men on purpose to damn them, for His glory. The true 
Calvinist believes both and insists that they are consistent. 
It is upon the union of these two truths that the strength 
and beauty of our theology depends. The ultimate and 
dominant reason why I advocate the revision of the West- 
minster Confession is that it does not state these two truths 
in their relations and harmony. It is full of God's sover- 
eignty in the choice of the elect, and overflows with the 
declaration of His special love for them, all of which I 
devoutly believe. But it contains no summary of those 
Scriptures, and of those acts and words of God in Christ, 
which explicitly teach that He is the Saviour of all men, 
and not willing that any should perish, but that all should 



118 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



come to repentance. In former articles I have stated the 
proposition thus: Our Confession does not contain one 
declaration of God's infinite love to men, nor one declara- 
tion that Christ's sacrifice for sin is sufficient for all, 
adapted to all, and offered to all. This statement was 
made not rashly, but advisedly, reverently, and in the fear 
of God. Will the good brethren who are so much offended 
by it have the patience to notice the preciseness of its word- 
ing ? It does not say that the Confession denies, or even 
that it contains no implication of God's infinite love to all 
men, but that the Confession contains no declaration of 
this great truth, nor of the sufficiency, adaptation, and uni- 
versal offer of the Gospel salvation, in which God's infinite 
love to men is embodied. Some have garbled this state- 
ment, and held up parts of it to scorn. Let them pass. 
Others, among our ablest theologians, have fairly met and 
attempted to disprove it by quotations from the Confession 
itself. But they have not succeeded. The most they claim 
to have shown is that there are statements in the Confession 
which imply what I maintain it does not declare. 

It is useless to go over the ground again. Let our min- 
isters and intelligent laymen read the Confession for them- 
selves and judge between us. For however valuable the 
testimony of " Experts " may be — and on this point I do 
not dispute what The Presbyterian has so well said, — the 
ultimate decision of the question of Revision rests with the 
whole Church represented in her Presbyteries. The Con- 
fession is the symbol and standard of the whole Church, a 
professed statement of what Presbyterians believe. 

Even if the doctrine of God's infinite love for all 
men can be logically deduced from its statements by our 
theological experts, that is very far from being sufficient. 
A truth so vital to the common faith of Christendom, and 
so intimately related to the missionary zeal by which the 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



119 



Church of to-day is eminently distinguished from what she 
was in the time of the "Westminster Assembly, and for two 
centuries after, ought to stand out upon her banner with 
the same clearness that it has in the inspired gospels. It is 
no answer to our objection to observe that our missionary 
zeal has sprung up and nourished in spite of this alleged 
defect in our Standards ; for it is quite in accordance with 
the economy of God's providence and grace that the life 
and experience of Christians should precede and mould the 
formulation of their Creed. This principle is illustrated in 
the whole history of Christian doctrine. The Presbyte- 
rian Church in this country may resist, but she cannot ulti- 
mately prevent the application of this principle. 

For these reasons I have ventured, in response to the call 
of the General Assembly, to suggest that we amend the 
third chapter of our Confession by inserting some such 
statement as the following : " God's eternal decree hinder- 
eth no one from accepting Christ as He is offered to all men 
for salvation in the Gospel; nor ought it to be so con- 
strued as to contradict the declarations of Scripture that 
Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, 
and that God is not willing that any should perish, but that 
all should come to repentance." 

If any man objects to the wording of this amendment, 
let him frame a better one and I will accept it. But if 
any one says, as the Arminians do, that the truth it is in- 
tended to embody is inconsistent with our system of doc- 
trine, or that its adoption would mar the strength and 
beauty of our Confession, I differ with him absolutely and 
uncompromisingly, because I am a Calvinist. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



XYII. 



GOD'S INFINITE LOYE TO MEN AND THE 
WESTMINSTER CONFESSION. 

By all means the most plausible argument in favor of a 
revision of the Westminster Confession turns on the al- 
leged absence from that document of a due declaration 
of the love of God to mankind. It can surprise no one, 
therefore, that so able a reasoner as Dr. Yan Dyke speaks 
(in The Presbyterian for October 5th) of the failure of 
the Confession, in his view, to state the two truths of the 
sovereignty of God and His " infinite love for all men," 
in their relation and harmony, as "the ultimate and domi- 
nant reason" why he advocates its revision. I believe 
that this alleged failure cannot be more strongly or more 
convincingly argued than it has been by Dr. Yan Dyke in 
the paper referred to. No reader of it will fail to feel that 
if this be the state of the case, so serious a lack in our 
Confessional statement ought to be remedied. Only, when 
we go back to the Confession itself we discover that the 
reading of it does not leave the same impression upon the 
mind that was left by the reading of Dr. Yan Dyke's 
paper. The Confession begins with a most moving de- 
scription of God's character as the God of love (ii. 1), and 
traces His loving dealings with the children of men, on 
from plan to act, and from act to act, until He brings those 
whom His love sought out into the fruition of glory ; and 
the reader feels the document to be suffused from end to 
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CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



121 



end with the glow of infinite compassion. He cannot rise 
from reading it without a deep sense that here there is no 
lack of insistence upon the fundamental Christian doctrine 
that " God is love." 

Now, how are we to account for the different impres- 
sions made on the mind by Dr. Yan- Dyke's account of 
the Confession and by the Confession itself ? Possibly the 
following considerations will help us to understand it : 

1. Dr. Yan Dyke appears to set God's sovereignty and 
His love unduly over against one another. In the view 
of the Confession, as of the New Testament, (as, for ex- 
ample, in Ephesians, i. 5, where predestination is ac- 
cording to the good-Treasure of His will,) God's electing 
grace is the expression of His infinite love for men. So 
sharply does Dr. Yan Dyke oppose God's sovereignty and 
God's love for all men, however, as truths whose consist- 
ency we may find it hard to demonstrate, that the reader 
is apt to understand him as thinking of electing grace as 
a limitation of God's love. . Thus the highest exercise of 
love plays the part, in his paper, of clouding the mani- 
festation of infinite love. This unfortunate result is 
partly due to what seems an undue emphasis upon the 
word " all " in the phrase, " God's infinite love for all 
men," which is so used as inevitably to suggest the idea of 
equal and undiscriminating love for each and every man, 
distributively. The complaint that the Confession does 
not give its proper place to the " love of God for all men " 
thus almost passes into a complaint that in the Confessional 
scheme God's infinite love for the non-elect is not made a 
co-hinge with His sovereignty in the bestowal of His grace. 

When we escape from these suggestions, however, and 
ask seriously what place should be given to the truth of 
God's infinite love for men indiscriminately, as distin- 
guished from His special love to His chosen ones, among 



122 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



the architectonic principles of a Confession, it would seem 
that we are obliged to assign it a position which, though 
fundamental, yet would not be prominent in such a sense 
as implies frequent or pervasive assertion. A Confession 
which confined itself to declaring God's indiscriminate 
"love for all men* and its fruits in blessings equally uni- 
versally given, would be lacking in all the most precious 
doctrines of the Scriptures. A Confession which followed 
with equal minuteness and fullness the dealings of God 
with the non-elect and the elect, would be overburdened 
with the darker shadows of man's sin and God's holy 
justice. Is not the Westminster Confession's way the true 
one ? — to lay the foundations firm in a full description of 
God as the God of love (ii. 1), and then givers strength 
to the exhibition of this love in its highest manifestations 
from the eternal election " in the beloved " to the recep- 
tion into glory, with only such incidental mention here 
and there of the non-elect as the occasion demanded ? 
In one word, ought we to demand that a Confession 
should be framed as if it were a proclamation of God's 
love to sinners ? That is the function of a sermon. A 
Confession, on the other hand, is the Christians' expression 
of what God has done for them, and as such it ought not 
to be expected to contain more than clear recognition of 
God's love for all men, but should lay the stress rather on 
the exhibition of that love to His children. 

2. And this leads me to the second criticism I wish to 
make on Dr. Yan Dyke's paper. And that is, that he 
appears to me to make an unreasonable demand in the 
amount and kind of recognition he asks for God's uni- 
versal love, in the Confession. He is not satisfied with its 
recognition by clear or frequent " implication "/ he demands 
explicit " declaration" I understand him to allow that it is 
" implied," as, indeed, others who agree with him in his gen- 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



123 



eral contention (or, e. g., Dr. Candlish) certainly admit. 
But he insists that nothing will be satisfactory except an 
explicit " declaration " of " God's infinite love to men." 
Now, the unreasonableness of this demand is easily made 
evident by the simple remark that in it Dr. Yan Dyke 
asks of the Confession more than can easily be found on 
the surface of the New Testament. The New Testament 
does not seem to " contain one explicit declaration " of God's 
infinite " love to all men." I would not like to be misun- 
derstood here. It is not I who throw doubt on this precious 
truth being a doctrine — or say rather, the doctrine — of the 
New Testament. But, as it happens, it is a doctrine 
taught by clear " implication " in other doctrinal statements 
rather than by precise " declarations " of itself. The New 
Testament declares that " God is love," and so does the 
Confession say that He is " most loving, gracious, merciful, 
long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving 
iniquity, transgression, and sin ; the rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him." The New Testament, in one unique 
passage, says that " God so loved the world that He gave 
his only begotten Son"; but to say that He loved "the 
world " collectively is only " implicatively " to say that He 
loved " all men " distributively ; and, besides this one pas- 
sage, no other brings the words " loved " and " mankind " 
into immediate conjunction. Well, the gist of what I am 
urging is that if we can be satisfied with the New Testa- 
ment when it teaches this fundamental doctrine only by 
necessary " implication," we need not be so stringent in in- 
sisting that a like mode of teaching it — by " implication " 
rather than by explicit " declaration" — is intolerable in the 
Confession. 

That the Confession does " imply " God's infinite love to 
man is evident, it seems to me, without a quotation of 
passages. This is the fundamental idea of the Confession 



124 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



as well as of the New Testament ; all its doctrine is but 
an orderly development of God's love to man — election 
itself and all its consequents being, as I have said, not the 
limitation, bat the expression of His love for men. But 
it is also capable of being made evident by passages. We 
have just quoted the rich description of God's loving 
nature from ii. 1, and that God " is good and doeth good 
unto all " (xxi. 1) is asserted in detail on every convenient 
occasion. Nor are there lacking passages which assert the 
free offer of salvation in Christ and the responsibility of 
man in accepting or rejecting Him. He is the " mediator 
between God and man" (viii. 1), and God has "freely 
offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, re- 
quiring of them faith in Him that they may be saved" 
(vii. 3) — a passage the universality of which is not taken 
away, but rather established, by the fact that it proceeds 
to say that God gives more than this offer to those who 
are ordained to life. I submit that these clear " impli- 
cations" — if any one chooses to call them so — of the 
universal side of the Gospel are as much as should be 
asked for in a Confession, and that any Confession 
ought, as onr Confession does, to give the stress and main 
portion of its teaching to the great things that God does 
for man in the actual and complete saving of multitudes 
from penalty and sin, rather than to the (comparatively) 
little things He does in proclaiming the Gospel freely to 
all. All that ought to be asked is that this latter import- 
ant side of truth should be fully recognized. 

3. Lastly, I am constrained to say that the amending 
section which Dr. Yan Dyke proposes for insertion into 
the Confession, in order to supply its assumed defect in 
this matter, seems to me entirely unnecessary, because all 
that it asserts is already provided for in the Confession as 
it stands. This section is divided into two clauses. The 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



125 



first declares: "God's eternal decree hindereth uo one 
from accepting Christ as He is offered to all men for sal- 
vation in the Gospel." But what possible need can there 
be for this assertion after the Confession has declared that 
by the decree no " violence is offered to the will by the 
creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second 
causes taken away, but rather established " 2 All that is 
proposed finds itself already asserted here. The second 
clause runs : " Nor ought it to be so construed as to contra- 
dict the declaration of Scripture that Christ is the pro- 
pitiation for the sins of the whole world, and that God 
is not willing that any should perish, but that all should 
come to repentance." But how can it be so construed 
when the long-suffering God, who is "the rewarder of 
them that diligently seek Him," has "freely offered unto 
sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of 
them faith in Him that they may be saved " % The Con- 
fession is probably long enough already, and it is scarcely 
necessary to add to it merely in order to say over again, 
in other words, what it already provides for. 

Benjamin B. Waefield. 



XVIII. 



THE CONFESSION AND GOD'S INFINITE LOVE 
TO MEN. 

I am reluctant to utter another word on Bevision lest 
hearers should be wearied by my much speaking, and lest 
in my honest zeal for the cause I should appear to be hostile 
to those with whom I am in substantial agreement. May 
God give us all persevering grace to speak the truth in love, 
and to demonstrate that the odium theologicum is a thing 
of the past. It is not necessary, so far as we are concerned, 
but it may not be amiss for the sake of others, to say that 
the personal relations between Dr. Warfield and myself are 
of the most friendly kind, and that next to Christ and the 
Holy Catholic Church, Princeton Seminary, by tender 
memories and still more precious hopes, holds the largest 
place in my love and loyalty. I honestly think, and use 
the boldness of a friend to say, that the recent announce- 
ment in the secular press to the effect that " Princeton 
stands firm " in opposition to all Revision, is regretted by 
many of her most devoted friends. For " Princeton " rep- 
resents something more than the opinions of the honored 
men who now fill her professorial chairs as worthy suc- 
cessors of those who have finished their course. She has a 
future as well as a past to conserve, and nothing can more 
effectually paralyze her power for good than the public im- 
pression that her future is to be only a stereotyped repeti- 
tion of the past. The Revision against which it is pro- 
(126) 



CONFESSIONAL EEVISION. 



127 



claimed that she stcmds Jirm, will come ; it has come al- 
ready in the Church at large, and in the hearts of many of 
her own most cherished alumni. Wise churchmanship 
teaches that she should seek to guide rather than to arrest 
the inevitable movement. 

These convictions are greatly confirmed and strength- 
ened by both the admissions and the denials of Dr. War- 
field's article in The Presbyterian of November 2d. He 
admits that the Confession does not contain one explicit 
declaration of the infinite love of God to men. This is all 
I have contended for. I have, indeed, intimated, and 
think it would not be difficult to prove, that the implica- 
tions for which he contends are "far-fetched and little 
worth." But it is not necessary to insist upon this. It is 
enough to justify and urge on the movement for Revision, 
that the ablest defenders of the Confession, as it is, admit 
that it does not contain one explicit declaration of the in- 
finite love of God for men as men, and that all its positive 
declarations are confined to the expression of God's love for 
the elect. My ultimate and dominant reason for advocat- 
ing Revision is confirmed as a fact by my candid opponent. 
He denies only the inferences I draw from this fact. Let 
us look at some of his denials. 

1. He asks " in one word, ought we to demand that a 
Confession should be framed as if it were a proclamation of 
God's love to sinners ? " Now, no advocate of Revision 
has contended that a Confession ought to be merely a proc- 
lamation of God's love to sinners, and therefore, if Dr. 
Warfield's question has any pertinence to this discussion it 
is intended to affirm that our Confession ought not to con- 
tain any such proclamation. In other words, he admits 
that the Confession contains no such declaration as we think 
it ought to contain, but insists that, so far from being a de- 
fect, this omission is one of its crowning excellences. He 



128 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



adds, " that (the proclamation of God's love to sinners) is 
the function of a sermon." I will not push these premises 
to their logical conclusion, nor charge upon my brother the 
inference, from which I am sure he would shrink, that 
there ought to be one system of doctrine for the minister's 
study and another for his pulpit. It will be enough to say 
that this is just the difficulty with which some of our Pres- 
byterian pastors have labored and groaned in secret, that 
our Confession does not set forth the Gospel as our loyalty 
to Christ and our love for the souls of men compel us to 
preach it, and that too much of our time and strength is 
consumed in defending our Creed against objections which 
could easily be removed by such a revision as we advocate. 
We do not desire a Confession which would " confine itself 
to declaring God's indiscriminate love to all men." We 
have never used the word " indiscriminate " in such a con- 
nection. And we admit that a creed so " confined " would 
be " lacking in all the most precious doctrines of Scripture," 
except the one precious truth of God's infinite love. We do 
not propose to exclude God's special grace for His own 
elect. But we propose to add what we preach, that He is 
"not willing that any should perish, but that all should 
come to repentance." This would not "set God's sover- 
eignty and His love unduly over against one another," 
neither would it "overburden the Confession with the 
darker shadows of man's sin and God's holy justice." It 
would bring our Creed more into conformity with God's 
Word, and illuminate and sweeten it with the very light 
and sweetness of the Gospel. 

2. Dr. Warfield has one eminent qualification for a 
teacher of dogmatic theology, the courage of his convic- 
tions. Being thoroughly convinced that the Confession 
contains all it ought to contain, as an exposition of Scrip- 
ture, and that the demand for an explicit declaration of 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION. 



129 



God's infinite love to men is unreasonable, be does not 
besitate to deny tbat tbe New Testament contains any sucb 
declaration. Tbis is tbe crucial point in the whole contro- 
versy. Dr. Warfield contends that the New Testament 
teaches God's infinite love to men, not explicitly, but only 
by implication ; that the Confession teaches the same truth 
in the same way, and therefore he insists that we ought to 
be satisfied with the Confession as it is. I do not admit 
tbat the Confession teaches it even by implication. But 
conceding, for the sake of the argument, that it does, I 
affirm that in this respect our Creed is not in harmony with 
the Scriptures. They teach God's infinite love to men ex- 
plicitly, in repeated and varied declarations. I have a list 
of more than fifty familiar texts to sustain this position, not 
one of which is incorporated in our Confession, and only 
two of them are found among the appended proof-texts. 
The declarations of the ninth chapter of Romans, " Jacob 
have I loved and Esau have I hated "; " I will have mercy 
on whom I will have mercy," are quoted half a dozen times r 
but we look in vain for the crown and climax of the apostle's 
argument, " God hath concluded them all in unbelief that 
He might have mercy on all " (Rom. xi. 32), for the simple 
reason that there is no place for it, not even a branch on 
which it might be tied as an orange on a Christmas tree. 

" God is love " is quoted, but it is too big for the head 
it covers. I submit to Dr. Warfield that " God is love " 
and " God is most loving" are not co-extensive, and that 
the latter does not even imply His love for all men. It 
may easily be construed consistently with the horrible 
declaration of the Formula Consensus Helvetica : " The 
Scriptures do not extend to all and each God's purpose of 
showing mercy to man, but restrict it to the elect alone, 
the reprobate being excluded, even by name, as Esau, 
whom God hated with an eternal hatred " (Con. vi.). 



130 



CONFESSIONAL KEVISION. 



The text, " God so loved the world," etc., is quoted in 
connection with the Covenant of Grace to deliver some — i. e., 
the elect — out of the estate of sin and misery. I am glad 
Dr. Warfield does not adopt " the common gloss of (some) 
theologians," that " the world " means only the elect. But 
he tells us that this text is unique, that is to say, according 
to Worcester, " it is without an equal or another of the 
same kind," or as my brother puts it, u besides this one 
passage no other brings the words loved and mankind into 
immediate conjunction." Of course, he does not stickle 
for the mere words ; he means that the ideas of the two 
words are nowhere else brought into immediate connection. 
How precious, then, is that one text. Let us put it into 
our Confession, in all the fullness of its gracious meaning, 
and inscribe it upon our banner as an ensign for the nations. 
But is it unique ? Is this the only declaration of God's love 
for the world ? When Christ stood and wept over apostate 
Jerusalem and said, " How often would 1 have gathered you 
and ye would not," did He not exhibit and declare God's love 
for all men, even the non-elect ? When the apostle says, 
" Christ is the propitiation, not for oar sins only, but also the 
sins of the whole world" that " God is the Saviour of all 
'men, especially of them that believe," that " He is not will- 
ing that any should perish, but that all should come to rejpent- 
,<mce" that " He will have all men to be saved "/ is there 
not in these words an explicit declaration of God's infinite 
Jove to men ? Even admitting that the infinite love of God 
lor men, and the sufficiency and free offer of the Gospel sal- 
vation, are only impliedly set forth in the New Testament ; 
is it not the function of a Confession to expound and sum- 
marize the Word of God, and to furnish those whom the 
Church ordains and sends forth an explicit declaration of the 
doctrines by which they are to disciple all nations, and of the 
Gospel they are to preach in all the earth to every creature ? 



CONFESSIONAL REVISION". 



131 



I am persuaded, upon their own showing, that but for 
two things, (1) an honorable but easily exaggerated senti- 
ment that all things should continue as they were before 
the fathers fell asleep, and (2) a vague fear that there is 
somewhere in the Church a sleeping giant whom it is very 
dangerous to wake up ; all such men as Dr. Warfield would _ 
consent to revision and seek to guide it to safe conclusions. 
With the conservative sentiment I have a large sympathy ; 
but do not share at all in what seems to me an unfounded 
and unworthy fear. 

Henry J. Van Dyke. 



